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THE 
/?sTARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 
IN THE UNITED STATES 


A Study in American Philanthropy 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
NEW YORK : BOSTON > CHICAGO - DALLAS 
ATLANTA +: SAN FRANCISCO 


MACMILLAN & CO., LimitTED 
LONDON - BOMBAY + CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 


THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lt. 
TORONTO 


THE 
CHARITY ORGANIZATION 
MOVEMENT IN THE 
UNITED STATES 


A Study in American Philanthropy 


BY 


FRANK DEKKER WATSON, PH.D. 


PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL WORK, 
HAVERFORD COLLEGE 


dew ork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1922 


All rights reserved 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


CoPpYRIGHT, 1922, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 





Set up and printed. Published October, 1922. 


Press of 
J. J. Little & Ives Company 
New York, U. S. A. 


36/ 
W333 


2 

no 4 

— LF hunt bal 
; 


To 


A. E. W. 


A FELLOW STUDENT 
OF SOCIETY 


1083146 / 





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“The noblest charity is to prevent a man from accepting 
charity, and the best alms are to enable a man to dispense 
with alms.” 

THE TALMUD. 


“If men are friends there is no justice: but when they are 
just they still need friendship.” 
ARISTOTLE, 


“Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and have 
not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” 
STOLE AUL 


“Whoever walks a furlong without sympathy, walks to his 
own funeral drest in his shroud.” 
WHITMAN. 


“He who takes an interest in trying to cure poverty in a 
single case will soon come to find that nothing in politics or 
industry is foreign to him.” 

—The Friendly Visitor, a leaflet published by the Philadelphia 
Society for Organizing Charity. 





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PREFACE 


The material for this study has come from four sources 
—personal visits to a number of societies, conferences 
and correspondence with a number of leaders in the move- 
ment, as chairman from 1914 to 1921 of a case conference 
of the Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charity and a 
survey of the literature of the movement past and present. 
Since June, 1911, it has been the privilege of the writer 
to visit from time to time a number of Charity Organiza- 
tion Societies including those on the Pacific Coast and 
in the South as well as many in the East and Middle 
West. This has afforded an opportunity to secure first 
hand from the active workers in the field a statement of 
the many social problems with which each community 
is grappling and a record of many of their past successes 
and failures. 

For the more historical parts of the work, the chief 
source of material has naturally been the printed page, 
although not a little invaluable historical data were 
secured from personal interviews with those who were 
either pioneers in the movement or intimately associated 
with them. Among the sources of special value were old 
case records of various societies, their earlier reports, 
old newspaper files, the Proceedings of the National 
Conference of Charities and Correction, now the National 
Conference of Social Work, and the complete files of 
Lend-a-Hand, Charities and the Commons, and The Sur- 
vey; special volumes such as Gurteen’s “Handbook of 
Charity Organization” (published in 1882), Warner’s 
“‘American Charities” and others too numerous to men- 
tion here but which will be found in the Bibliography 
included in this volume. 

Among those who have rendered assistance the author 

1x 


X PREFACE 


takes this opportunity to record his debt of gratitude to 
Mrs. John M. Glenn, Dr. Edward T. Devine, Mr. Alex- 
ander Johnson, Mr. Francis H. McLean and Mr. Porter 
R. Lee. In addition he wishes to make special mention 
of the sympathetic interest of Miss Mary E. Richmond, 
who stood ever ready with helpful advice, and of the 
scholarly aid of Miss Zilpha D. Smith, who read much of 
the manuscript covering the history of the movement in 
the United States in its pioneer days and made many 
constructive criticisms. 

The author would, if space permitted, find great pleas- 
ure in acknowledging individually the courteous treat- 
ment that he has received as he travelled over the 
country and enjoyed the co-operation of the many workers 
in the field. 

The author desires finally to acknowledge with most 
sincere gratitude his debt of obligation to his wife, Amey 
Eaton Watson, who has not only shown a deep interest 
in the preparation of this study but also been an able 
and constructive critic. 

In making these acknowledgments, the author by no 
means implies that any of those here mentioned share 
his conclusions or even a major part of them. Any 
errors or failings that may be detected in the final form 
of the text must be imputed to himself. 


FRANK D. WATSON. 
HAVERFORD, Pennsylvania, 1921. 


CHAPTER 


I 
“II 
Ill 
Av 
if V 
VI 


VII 
VIil 


IX 


XII 
“XII 


CONTENTS 


PeReRO@P ee. yk, 


4 


INTRODUCTION 

FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS . 
ANTECEDENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 
FUNCTIONS OF A CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY 


PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGAN- 
IZATION 


BEGINNINGS OF THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION 
MOovEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES . 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT (1883-1895) 


THE ERA oF MOVEMENTS FOR THE PREVENTION 
OF PovERTY (1896-1904) . 


NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT (1905- 
I92I) . 


THE RENAISSANCE OF SOCIAL CASE WORK (1905- 
1921 Concluded) . 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 


PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS 


Tue PHILOSOPHY OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 


ENE Or oa a 


PAGE 
ix 


II 
64 
94 


114 


172 


222 


281 


SOT 


407 
444 
492 
522 


Shr, 





CHARITY ORGANIZATION 
MOVEMENT IN 
THE UNITED STATES 


GrAP LER: 1 
INTRODUCTION 


Tuis book is a study of that part of the field of Ameri- 
can philanthropy known as the Charity Organization 
Movement.! We are here concerned with but a section 
of a larger movement which in its turn is but one of the 
social developments of our times. The century which saw 
the rise of charity organization will as often be known as 
the age of humanitarianism as the age of machinery. 
Some day a complete history of the century will be 
written from this point of view. In this present volume 
the writer has set himself a more humble task. 

Although the present study covers but a part of a 
larger movement, it does not suffer from lack of unity. 
This is due in the first place to the inherent nature of the 
part which contains within itself certain essential and 
characteristic features easily discernible. The earliest 
charity organization societies in the United States adopted 
certain so-called fundamental principles. In the main, 
these principles or methods have been consistently ad- 
hered to with a constant faith in their usefulness. It is 


‘ *This excludes a discussion of both current Catholic and Jewish 
charity as embodied in the Societies of St. Vincent de Paul and the 
United Hebrew Charities respectively. 

1 


2 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


due in the second place to the geographical limits set 
for the study. The economic background of America 
has definitely influenced the development of charity or- 
ganization after its transplanting from Europe. 

Before proceeding further, a brief explanation of the 
term charity organization society will aid the reader. 
TN charity geomet society is briefly a society for 
organizing charity.2 “When a person sees a need, wins 
the cooperation of those who are interested or should be, 
gains their aid in devising a plan to meet that need and 
retains their cooperation in carrying out that plan or some 
better one that may later develop, until the need is per- 
manently met, he is “organizing charity.” In the com- 
plex life of modern communities, such needs come con- 
stantly to notice, thereby necessitating the formation of 
a society for organizing charity to supplement or aid 
the individual in a wise expression of his benevolence. 
Such societies are ‘‘only devices which men have created 
in order to help them to be charitable more effectively.” ® 
The function then of the societies whose origin and de- 
velopment is the theme of this study is to help “all who 
will work together to find out, need by need, what the 
best way out of eech difficulty is, best for those on whom 
the need presses most heavily and best for the community 
at large; and to see each problem through to a final 
solution.’’ 4 

~~ 'The striking thing about the birth of the charity organ- 
ization movement is the reason which actuated those who 
called it into being. The pioneers inaugurated “the new 
charity” because there were so many already. “Religious 


*For a fuller discussion, see chapters IV and V. 

2“Society for Organizing Charity” is the name of the Philadelphia 
and Providence societies. When the movement produced an asso- 
ciation including in its membership societies of the United States 
and Canada, it adopted this form of title feeling that it more clearly 
stated the function of its members than either of the more popular titles, 
Charity ‘Organization Society or Associated Charities. 

* Porter R. Lee, “Treatment,” a pamphlet published by the Charity 
Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation (1910), p. 11. 

*Zilpha D. Smith, from correspondence with the author. 


INTRODUCTION 3 


-and secular activity in philanthropy had created, in our 
large cities, many different agencies. However well these 
may have been organized internally, they were not organ- 
ized with reference to each other, and this fact led to 
the formation of charity organization societies.” 

The new movement was really the introduction of a new 
method for utilizing the existing charitable forces and re- 
sources of a community, a method that may be of use to 
both individuals and associations of individuals whether 
they term themselves charity organization societies or not. 
In fact, the charity organization movement has so pro- 
foundly influenced the social thought of the day that 
many of its methods are employed by child welfare 
societies, hospital social service departments, courts of 
domestic relations, juvenile courts, and the Red Cross 
in its work of civilian relief. It would make an interest- 
ing study, did space permit, to trace the growth and 
spread of the so-called “C. O. S.” methods among the 
various social agencies of to-day working with individuals. 
The scientific study of society from the evolutionary 
point of view leaves little room for the belief in Minerva- 

‘like beginnings in social moveménts. Although the birth 
of the charity organization movement was characterized 
by a new method of organizing charity, an examination 

of the writings of the pioneers in this country bears wit- 
ness to the truth of the foregoing statement. One of the 
early leaders? in America states that it was the deduc- 
tions and combinations of certain results from the work 
of Ozanam in Paris, Dr. Chalmers in Edinburgh, of the 
personal service and life of Edward Denison in the East 
of London, of the well-known municipal plan in Elber- 
feld, of the much older plan tested in Hamburg, and of 
other studies, work and experiments widely separated in 
place and scope which became the initiative of the charity 

*M. E. Richmond, “Charitable Codperation,” Proceedings of the 
National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1901, p. 208. 


* George B. Buzelle, General Secretary Brooklyn Bureau of Charities, 
from 1881 to 1893. 


4 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


organization movement, and adds in conclusion “the 
principles of Charity Organization are as old as the 
mutual needs and mutual obligations of society.” 4 
Wherever we place the beginnings, the roots of modern 
philanthropy are ancient. It is the foliage only that is 
new with the changing seasons. An adequate study of 
the movement here under review must therefore begin 
at a much earlier date than 1873, and in places far 
distant from Germantown, Philadelphia, the first com- 
munity in America to claim a Charity Organization 
Society.2, For this reason there is first given in 
this book a section reviewing in brief the various ante- 
cedents of the movement which is the especial concern of 
this study. 

The writer feels that in this age of popular discussion 
of social questions—an age in which the phrase, “the 
abolition of poverty,” has been coined and is gaining 
increasing circulation, an apology is hardly needed for 
the appearance of a study of a movement whose chief 
concern to-day is with the cure and ultimate prevention of 
poverty. Furthermore, the fact that the movement is 
not ephemeral if nothing else makes it significant to 
all students of society. ‘The charity organization idea 
does have extraordinary staying power. Not being 
dependent upon the outcome of a political campaign, or 
upon an endowed foundation, it defies unpopularity and — 
misrepresentation, it makes its way by sheer force of its 
reasonableness, by its scientific quality.” * The words 


*George B. Buzelle, “Charity Organization in Cities,” The Charities 
Review, Vol. II, p. 3 (1892). 

Josephine Shaw Lowell, another pioneer, wrote in the preface of 
her book on “Public Relief and Private Charity”: ‘There is not, per- 
haps, an original thought or suggestion in it:—an important part of 
it is direct and verbal quotation; and to every student of the subject 
it will be apparent that almost the whole of it is taken from the writings 
of wise men and women who have lived during the past hundred years.” 
“Public Relief and Private Charity,’ (1884), see preface. 

* Buffalo, New York, was the first large American city to have a 
Charity Organization Society, organized in 1877. 

*E. T. Devine, “Social Ideals Implied in Present. American Programs 


) INTRODUCTION 5 


used in 1882 by one of the earliest American writers on 
the subject, ““The present volume owes its publication to 
‘the fact of the widespread interest which is being felt in 
every section of the country in Charity Organization,” ! 
are aS appropriate to-day as when first written. The 
movement is still in its infancy. During the last fifteen 
years it has grown more than during all the years before. 
The number of societies to-day is at least double that 
existing in 1905. There are still, however, whole regions 
of vast c~tent in this country where even the meaning of 
family case work ? is unknown. 
The present volume will have failed in one of its objects 
‘if it does not serve as an interpretation of the spirit of 
charity organization as well as a record of past failures 
and achievements. Too many current criticisms of so- 
called ‘organized charity” resolve themselves upon 
‘analysis into mere prejudices. Others are well founded, 
‘since the work of some societies is poor and they them- 
selves are hardly charity organization societies save in 
name. Too many members of boards of directors fail to 
appreciate that there is a “new view” ®? of charity,—that 
new wine is ever being poured into old wine skins. 
Societies under their control are not in popular phrase- 
ology ‘“‘on the map.”” Too many busy social workers have 
acquired what has been well termed the “breathless 
habit.”. It is to be regretted that many workers do not 
grasp in the beginning of their professional careers the 
significance of the age-long slow changes in the mani- 
festations of the spirit of charity, and do not appreciate 
the fact that the forces of civilization have forever been 
moulding and remoulding the objects and methods of 


of Voluntary Philanthropy,” Publications of the American Sociological 
Society, Vol. VII, p. 187 (1912). 

*S. H. Gurteen, “A Handbook of Charity Organization,” p. 3 (1882). 

* Family case work and family work are terms used increasingly to-day 
as synonymous with charity organization work. They will so be used 
throughout this study. 

°E. T. Devine, “The New View.” A foreword by the Editor, Charities 
and the Commons, Vol. XVIII, pp. 87-90 (1907). 


6 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


charity. Few social workers realize that so recently 
as the “forties,” there was an impulse almost nation- 
wide for establishing Associations for Improving the Con- 
dition of the Poor,1—an impulse which if it had evolved 
and not crystalized might have made unnecessary the 
movement whose history is here recorded. 

One value of a study covering so wide a geographical 
area is the comparisons that it makes possible between 
places. The societies differ very much in details of 
method, even among the leading ones, whose officials 
are in frequent touch with each other; but these differ- 
ences are largely due to the necessity of adaptation to 
local conditions. There are unfortunately other differ- 
ences among societies. In the phrase of the students of 
social evolution, some of the societies are still in “the 
stone age” of the practice of charity. fIn brief, progress 
in the movement has been uneven; here a new society, 
there a society atrophying or undergoing rejuvenation., 

A word as to the division of field covered. Chapter II 
on “Foreign Antecedents” contains a bird’s-eye view of 
those organized efforts abroad for dealing with poverty 
which paved the way for the charity organization move- 
ment in America. Chapter III contains a similar review 
of the history of charity in the United States antecedent 
to the charity organization movement. Chapter IV is 
devoted to a discussion of Functions of a Charity Organ- 
ization Society, while Chapter V presents the underlying 
principles and methods of charity organization. Chapter 
VI traces the origin and development of the movement 
down to 1883, by which time the several almost inde- 
pendent beginnings had taken place. Chapter VII fol- 
lows the development thereafter to 1896, as now this city, 
and then that took the next forward step. Chapter VIII 
reviews the progress of the movement from 1896, by 


*Frank Tucker, formerly General Agent of the New York Association 
for Improving the Condition of the Poor, “What a Charity Worker 
is Expected to Do,” Charities, Vol. VII, p. 35 (1901). 


INTRODUCTION 7 


which time the industrial depression of 1893-94 had spent 
‘its force, to 1905. This is the era of beginnings of move- 
ments whose end is the prevention of poverty. Chap- 
ters IX and X carry the history along from 1905 when 
the movement entered the period of national expansion 
to 1921, during which period the methods of charity or- 
ganization have been subjected to careful analyses and 
enrichment. The relations of charity organization socie- 
ties to other organizations have become so many and 
intimate that an adequate account of their work traverses 
‘the entire field of modern philanthropy. It has therefore 
‘been necessary because of this interrelation of social 
forces and the unity of social work to make frequent cross 
references to related movements in both the field of 
thought and of action. 

In Chapter XI some standards and tests of efficiency 
as applied to charity organization societies are presented. 
The following chapter examines current criticisms and 
prejudices of charity organization societies, while Chap- 
ter XIII concludes the study with a statement of the 
philosophy which underlies the movement and a discus- 
sion of the relation of family case work to movements for 
improving social conditions. 

In this connection the author regrets exceedingly that 
the limitation of space forbids the inclusion in this 
volume of a fuller biographical treatment of the pioneers 
of the charity organization movement in America, for 
wonderful power of personality was welded into the be- 
ginning of the movement. The names of Robert Treat 
Paine of Boston, John Glenn of Baltimore, Josephine 
Shaw Lowell of New York, and Oscar Carlton McCul- 
loch of Indianapolis will long be remembered by all who 
cherish the noble traditions of years of beginning and 
struggle, not to mention a longer list of those who served 
the cause of the organization of charity with distinction. 

It now remains to add a word as to Methodology. 
‘Throughout the book the method employed has been 


8 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


not only historical but philosophical and critical as well; 
philosophical in that an effort has been made throughout 
the study to explain the origin of the movement and to 
indicate the economic and social forces that have shaped 
its growth; critical in that the movement is viewed as an 
effort looking toward social adjustment; a goal that 
is definite, if not fixed, and progress toward which is 
subject to scientific measurement.! In all criticisms it 
should ever be borne in mind that there is a wide differ- 
ence between showing where a movement fails and that it 
is a failure. In the historical sections it has been the 
aim to show how the concepts with which the movement 
began have developed and have been applied under 
changing conditions. 

The field covered by the present study is large and 
its adequate treatment offers several difficulties. Two 
methods of arranging the data naturally suggest them- 
selves,—one to record year by year the development of 
the movement in each community—the other to discuss in 
general the development of the movement over a series of 
years. The latter method has been used, as the chief con- 
cern has been to keep in the foreground the story of the 
evolution of the movement as a whole. 

Throughout the study a more general use of statistics 
was found impossible for reasons which are almost 
obvious. The earlier case records of all the societies are 
inadequate and afford no basis of comparison with later 
records. Even at present there is no universal case 
record system used, though there is a definite tendency 
toward uniformity. Furthermore, the time and money 
required per case varies for a number of reasons. The 

*As early as 1884 Alexander Johnson, then chairman of the Com- 
mittee on Charity Organization of the National Conference of Charities 
and Correction pointed out that “at any rate we (charity organiza- 
tionists) ought to be able to present a candid and trustworthy state- 
ment as to the growth or the abatement of the evils we are working 
to suppress, so as to measure the value of our methods of work.” Pro- 


ceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1884, 
Dia2te 


INTRODUCTION 9 


case of a widowed mother usually makes a bigger demand 
on the resources of a society than that of the homeless 
‘man. In addition, the personal equation in widowed 
mother cases is so great that statistical comparisons 
often have little or no value. Because cf location 
certain societies have a relatively larger proportion of 
certain types of cases than others, e.g., the Seattle society 
‘has many cases of desertion and relatively few widow 
cases. Jacksonville and Savannah have large’ numbers 
of homeless cases. For this reason a comparison of 
budget and cases handled by the respective societies 
means little, not to mention the fact that there are other 
considerations vitiating a comparison, such as the effect 
of environment on the amount of material relief neces- 
sary.‘ Other factors limit the use of statistics in a study 
of this kind certainly for comparisons of one period with 
‘another. There is first the increase in the standard of 
‘relief brought about by a rapidly accumulating fund of 
medical knowledge and the growing realization of the 
close causal relation between disease and poverty. There 
is secondly the change in the cost of living particularly 
during the last ten years, and thirdly, the increasing 
social resources such as hospitals, sanitoria, municipal 
lodging houses that a society may to-day utilize in its 
daily work but which the older societies had to do with- 
out in their earlier days or else labor to secure, mean- 
time using or creating makeshifts. Not a few societies 
to-day find their work handicapped by the lack of 
proper agencies, both private and public for caring for 
dependents, defectives and delinquents. 

Notwithstanding all that has just been said, it does not 
follow that standards of efficiency are not possible in the 


* For example, on the Pacific Coast and in the South, fuel is a negligible 
factor. Outdoor work on streets and roads is possible the year round. 
In Seattle because of cool summers and cool water supplied in every 
home from mountain sources, ice is not an absolute necessity. There 
is also the difference in the cost of living between the country, small 
town, city and metropolis. 


Io CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


field of charity organization, though as we have already 
noted, the indefinable, unrecordable personal relationship 
is probably a bigger factor in social work than in almost 
any other field of human activity. It is therefore one 
of the purposes of this study to suggest tests of efficiency 
which may at least prove helpful, though it is obvious 
that no one set of tests can adequately meet all environ- 
ing differences. The charity organization society has 
come into existence to fulfill a definite function. Like all 
other institutions, it should be constantly “weighed in the 
balance” to ascertain how nearly it is meeting its obliga- 
tions and to give assurance that perchance it is not imped- 
ing another possible organization from meeting more satis- 
factorily the social need. Here as with the Church, State, 
the School and Industry, one must be constantly reminded 
- that all these institutions are made for man and not man 
for them. 


Staab HRI TT 
FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 


THE roots of modern charity lie buried deep in human 
nature and are as old as man himself. The psychological 
basis of altruism is found in man’s instinct of gregarious- 
‘ness. In the remotest depths of antiquity that we can 
penetrate are to be discovered evidences that men felt 
compassion for the poor and extended relief to the dis- 
tressed.? In fact, if one were to search out the origin of 
sympathy, the great social bond, he would have to go back 
‘to still lowlier beginnings than the birth of the human 
family, for it is fundamental in all animal life where the 
parent provides for the offspring. ‘‘Far back in the animal 
world,” writes Ellwood, ‘“‘we begin to find the care of 
weaker individuals by family groups.” ® A history of the 
unfolding of the charitable impulse in man and of all the 
forms that this wellnigh universal impulse has taken would 
be an attractive task, but one which would at this time 
take us too far afield. We must here be content to trace 
the development of not all forms of organized charitable 
impulse, but only of those forms which have had a marked 
influence on the movement which is the especial concern 
of this study. 

*See W. Trotter, “Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War” (1916). 

*For further evidence in this connection see Yu-Yue Tsu, “The Spirit 
of Chinese Philanthropy.” Studies in History, Economics, and Public 
Law, edited by the Faculty of Political Science of Columbia University, 
mol. L, No..1 (1012). 

* Charles A. Ellwood, “The Functions of Charity in Modern Society,” 
Charities and the Commons, Vol. XIX, p. 1349 (1908). 

_ For an interesting statement of the evolution of sympathy in the 
animal world, see pp. 92-94 McDougall’s “Social Psychology.” See 


also Kropotkin, “Mutual Aid in the Animal World.” 
| 11 


12 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


It is difficult to understand the great influence that 
charity has exerted on the acts of man unless one realizes 
how religion, especially Christianity, has reinforced by 
its teachings the instinct of sympathy and altruism. 
Along with other mighty truths entering the world with 
the birth of Christianity, ‘“‘ccame a new ideal of human 
nature; a sense of value in each human soul for its own 
sake, however degraded or forsaken that soul might be. 
Out of the new faith in the fatherhood of God flowed this 
other new faith in the brotherhood of men, and it made 
one of the great transitions in the evolution of the human 
race. The poor and rejected, the submerged of mankind, 
were regarded in a wholly new light when they were thus 
accepted as essential parts of the one body in Christ. 
The solidarity of the race became a practical belief. If 
one suffered, all suffered with him. The ‘Caritas’ of 
the Christians gave a quality and color to human relations 
which classic civilization never knew.’”! 

But beautiful as was the new sense of value of the 
individual which Christianity brought, “it brought with it 
its own new danger. ‘The new zeal for charity came to 
demand the poverty on which to spend itself. The new 
philanthropy created a new mendicancy. Poverty grew 
by what it fed on.” Moreover, with success came degen- 
eration; as the church became an institution administer- 

Francis G. Peabody, “The Problem of Charity,” Charities Review, 
Vol. III, p. 4 (1893). See also Amos G. Warner, “American Charities,” 
Rev. ed., p. 6 (1908), and J. G. W. Uhlhorn, “Christian Charity in 
the Ancient Church,” Book First, Chap. I (1883). 

For a brief review of the charity of ancient Hebrews see Rabbi Martin 


A. Meyer, “The Charity of the Ancient World,” in the Second Annual 
Report of the Municipal Charities Commission, City of Los Angeles, Cal., 
pp. 12-18 (1914-1915). 

For an exposition of the rabbinical teaching governing the charity 
of the Jews in the Middle Ages and still held as authoritative among 
orthodox Jews see “The Section on Charity from the Schulhan Arukh,” 
translated by Louis Feinberg. “Studies in Social Work,” number 6, 
The New York Sckool of Philanthropy, November, 1015. 

For an exposition of principles and methods of Jewish social service 
in the United States see Boris Bogen, “Jewish Philanthropy,” 1917. 

*Francis G. Peabody, “The Problem of Charity,’ Charities Review, 
Volo ilep. 4a 16034 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 13 


ing progressively larger revenues, “its service of the poor 
_degenerated, partly from worldliness, and partly from 
| ‘other worldliness.’ ” | Sag 

Although it may be a sorry day for humanity when 
some aspects of the medieval conception of charity en- 
tirely depart from the world,” the motives of much of the 
philanthropy of the Middle Ages and the form of the ex- 
‘pression of practically all of it differ so markedly from the 
‘so-called “scientific charity” of the twentieth century that 
a discussion of it finds no logical place in this study.’ 

If the movement under review were merely the result 
\of the application to the problem of human misery of 
the scientific point of view, always characterized in all 
fields by a searching for.causes, this section of our study 
could take cognizance of little before the eighteenth 
‘century. Then it was that one of the bases of modern 
charity came into being—the wave of humanitarian sen- 
‘timent which rose to power and spread abroad a new 
view of man and society, fostering a scientific spirit which 
stimulated inquiry and investigation into all questions. 
However the movement here under review is, beside being 


*Amos G. Warner, “American Charities,” Rev. ed., p. 6 (1908). 

*See Editorial by E. T. Devine, “A Medieval Efficiency Test,” The 
Survey, Feb. 7, 1914, pp. 596-597. 

“If I were trying,” writes Dr. Crothers, ‘to induce a young man or 
a young woman to enter the way of charitable effort in our modern 
times, I should go back to the classic expressions—the old Christian 
expressions if you please—to the men of the spirit of St. Francis in 
all the ages down to the present time, who gave themselves utterly in 
an enthusiasm for humanity, not hoping for reward, nor calculating, 
and I would say: ‘Here is the opportunity, in these modern times, for 
the very greatest self-sacrifice, self-giving, that the world has ever 
seen.” Samuel M. Crothers, D.D., Charities, Vol. IX, p. 577 (1902). 

For an understanding of the motives of much of the charity of Middle 
Ages see “Sermon on Alms,” by Saint John Chrysostom (347-407 A.D.), 
translated by Margaret M. Sherwood, Studies in Social Work, 
number 10, The New York School of Philanthropy (February, 1917). 

For an account of Medieval Jewish charity see Rabbi S. H. Son- 
neschein, “Hebrew Charities during the Middle Ages,” Proceedings of 
the National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1883, p. 323. 

* Accounts of the charity that preceded the modern era will be found 
in C. S. Loch, “Charity and Social Life’ (1910); J. G. W. Uhlhorn, 
“Christian Charity in the Ancient Church” (1883); Leon Lalleman, 
“Historie de la Charite” (1902-1910). 


I4 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


a new point of view of misery and its causes, an embodi- 
ment of a group of practices previously tried out in dif- 
ferent places and times by many laborers, some of whom 
did not subject misery to the scientific analysis now in- 
creasingly common. As it was in part at least the deduc- 
tions and results from these practices that became the 
initiative of the charity organization movement, it is 
necessary to begin not with the humanitarian movement 
of the eighteenth century but with the work of St. Vin- 
cent de Paul a century earlier, before whom it is difficult 
to find much evidence of the use of methods similar to 
those which later characterized the charity organization 
movement.’ 


THE CONTRIBUTION OF ST. VINCENT DE PAUL 


The days of St. Vincent de Paul (1576-1660) were 
turbulent ones not only in France but in Europe. Before 
the Huguenot wars had ceased in France the Thirty 
Years’ War was raging in Germany. In the midst of the 
disorders in Church and State during this troubled period 
the sufferings of the poor specially appealed to the heart 
of Vincent de Paul. They were neglected spiritually as 
well as temporally, and on all sides one beheld extremes 
of poverty and ignorance. This French priest, ordained in 
1600, was one of those of his time who recognized the 
fact that a fundamental change in handling the problem 
of poverty was needed. The charities of his day though 
well intentioned he believed were “ill regulated.” Unlike 
many of his time, he opposed indiscriminate alms- giving 
and begging on the streets. 

As we are interested only in the contributions which 

*For an interesting statement of methods urged for the relief of the 
poor as early as 1526 suggesting not a few principles later to be 
embodied in the charity organization movement, see “A Letter Adal 
dressed to the Senate of Bruges, Concerning the Relief of the Poor or 
Concerning Human Need,” by Juan-Louis Vives, translated by Margaret 


M. Sherwood, Studies in Social Work, number 11, The New York | 
School of Philanthropy (February, 1917). : 
. 

| 


' 


| 
|! FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 15 
“St. Vincent de Paul made to that body of knowledge in 
the practice of charity which afterward became the basis 
of the charity organization movement, little need be 
said of his other humanitarian interests, which were broad, 
including among them work for children, the insane and 
prisoners. His work among prisoners (1618). leading 
to the founding of the “Lazarites,”’ an association of 
‘priests organized to work among the outcasts of society 
-and in the aid of prisoners, is well known.! It was, how- 
ever in the field of relief of distress among the poor that 
his influence was most potent. 

_ On the one hand, he saw about him suffering and 
| misery, on the other wealth and culture. His chief hope 
‘In ameliorating the former lay in the possibility of estab- 
lishing friendly relations between the rich and poor. With 
‘this end in view he preached the duty of the more for- 
‘tunate classes to aid the less fortunate. Christ came to 
‘seek and to save that which was lost. He was a comfort 
to the widow, the poor, and the afflicted: those who would 
be his followers must do likewise. ‘To send money is 
good, but we have not really begun to serve the poor till 
we visit them,” he preached. “The poor,” he maintained, 
“are your masters and mine.” His words rang out, “O 
God! how beautiful are the poor when we see them in 
the light of faith, while if we judge them according to 
this world, they seem no doubt despicable.” His appeal 
was essentially religious. Because ke=thesweket the church 
rose above all barriers, he carried himself as the humble 
equal of any man though he-seems to have had no idea 
of breaking down class distinctions.” 

_ To this end St. Vincent de Paul established in 1617 
what was known as the “Ladies of Charity.” These were 


*The name “Lazarites” derived from the house in Paris where they 
lived. The Lazarites or Vincentians are known at home as among the 
best educators of the secular clergy, and abroad as zealous missionaries. 

*The quotation just given which would have been foreign to the 
genius of St. Francis, doubtless emphasizes his own (St. Vincent de 
Paul’s) sense of class distinction. 


16 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


composed of groups of leisure women whom he organized 
to visit the poor in their homes. Later, confraternities for 
men were organized for like purpose until in the early 
enthusiasm of the movement, something like thirty charity 
associations were founded. Through them St. Vincent 
de Paul aimed not only to discourage begging and vag- 
rancy but to encourage generous provision for the aged 
and the sick and trade training for destitute children. 

Not the least remarkable of St. Vincent de Paul’s 
powers was “his faculty of persuading—or rather com- 
pelling—the rich to give beyond all measure of what is 
ordinarily considered charitable. At his bidding women 
of rank and wealth would give till they had no money 
left, and would then sell their jewels to meet his per- 
sistent claims. Nor would he ever consent that a respon- 
sibility once undertaken should be set aside, even in face 
of what might seem a more pressing need. If the new 
work was imperative, then it must be met by further 
sacrifice. In short, he recognized no limits to the duty 
of giving, whether of money or of self.”? 

Like all pioneers, he had to blaze his own trail, and 
needless to add, had to learn much by his own mistakes. 
Thus he soon encountered difficulties in carrying on his 
work through his “Ladies of Charity.” Many of them 
had little real knowledge of the principles of relief and 
little real conception of their own abilities for such 
service. A travelling secretary, Mlle. Le Gras, employed 
by St. Vincent to supervise the confraternities in different 
parts of the country and to reform those which had fallen 
below the standard, found from her experience how 
untrustworthy the volunteer work of leisured women may 
be when subject to no control. To belong to the Ladies 
of Charity “became a fad; besides the ladies wanted to 
do the pleasant work, and the dirt and disease were 


*“Charity in the Seventeenth Century,” The Charity Organization 
Review, Vol. XXXIV, No. 204 (new series), pp. 365-366 (1913). 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 17 


offensive as usual. The workers were irregular and 
uncertain. . . .”1 To remedy this, Mlle. Le Gras, a per- 
son with great powers of eloquence combined with the 
power of first hand knowledge of the poor and sick, gath- 
ered about her women of the working class who were pre- 
pared to devote their whole lives under her direction to the 
work of charity. “It was long before M. Vincent would 
consent that this community should become an Order 
under vows and under his own direction, but when once he 
had consented his devotion to it was unremitting.”? Thus 
was founded (1633) the famous organization, the Sisters 
of Charity. In the main, the ranks of the new order 
were recruited from the peasant country girls. The form 
of organization was revolutionary. Its vows were not 
perpetual. The dress was secular, consisting of the gray 
habit and cornettes of the country. Its members were 
not cloistered but in the world attending the sick, the 
wounded, the dying and the prisoner. While religion was 
their vocation, their mission was chiefly philanthropic. 
For this work St. Vincent de Paul devised rules worked 
out in great detail to guard against indiscriminate giving. 
Before a case could be visited it had to be “passed” by 
the treasurer. He divided the poor into three classes: (1) 
Those who could earn nothing, children, sick, aged. They 
were to receive full support. (2) Those who could earn 
half their support. They were to receive half support. 
(3) Those who could earn but one-fourth of their support. 
They were to receive three-fourths support.® 

Thus it may be said to the credit of St. Vincent de 
Paul that he not only voiced a protest against indiscrim- 
inate almsgiving when such protests were rare, but he 
instituted on a scale before unknown a system of the 


*S. G. Smith, “Social Pathology,” p. 95 (1911); see L. V. E. Bougand, 
“History of St. Vincent de Paul,” translated by Rev. J. Brady (1908). 

*“Charity in the Seventeenth Century,” The Charity Organization 
Review, Vol. XXXIV, No. 204 (new series) pp. 365-366 (1913). 

* Address by Michael J. Scanlan before the New York School of Philan- 
thropy, 1914. 


18 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


friendly visitation of the poor,! a practice destined to 
play an important part in the Hamburg system of Public 
Relief to be discussed next, in the work of the Society 
of St. Vincent de Paul founded in Paris by Frederick 
Ozanam in 1833 and named in honor of the man whose 
work on behalf of the poor has just been described, and 
finally in the charity organization movement itself.” 


CONTRIBUTION OF THE HAMBURG SYSTEM OF POOR 
RELIEF 


The eighteenth century witnessed a wave of humani- 
tarian sentiment which spread abroad a new view of man 
and society. Its watchword was “the perfectibility of 
man,” and its cry ‘fa return to Nature.” This century 
also witnessed the rise of the scientific spirit of inquiry 
which was to question all things anew. The story of the 
first organized expression of these tendencies in the field 
of charity is full of interest and instruction. 

‘About the close of the first decade of the eighteenth 
century, a very severe plague raged in Hamburg, the 
wealthiest of the four Free Cities and the intellectual] 
centre at that time of Northern Germany. To overcome 
this evil, a Sanitary Association was formed and the very 
first lesson which its members learned was the need of a 
radical reform in the management of the poor-relief. 
Hamburg was overrun with vagrants and beggars, at- 
tracted by the well-known liberality of its many rich 
men.” * The care of the poor, which was in the hands of 

4 

"Even so late as his seventy-third year, he rode from nae end of 
France to the other, everywhere organizing relief societies for the benefit 
of the poor who were dying of the famine incident to the Fronde 
rebellion, and founding new branches of the Sisters of Charity for the 
care of the sick and starving. For further light on the debt of modern’ 
charity to St. Vincent de Paul, see Thomas M. Mulry, “The Church 
and Charity,” Charities, Vol. V, No. 27, p. 2 (10900). s 

*E. K. Sanders, “Vincent de Paul, Priest and Philanthropist,” pp. 
138-159 (1913). 

Joseph Henry Crooker, “Problems: in American Society,” 1880, 
p. 64. For a more complete account of the Hamburg system than 


here given, see above book, p. 64-115. The account here given has 
; 


| 


| 
. 


; FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 19 
the Church, was as a rule neither wise nor ample. The 
funds collected in poor-boxes of the churches were often 
diverted toward purely ecclesiastical purposes; when 
given to the poor, “they were distributed indiscriminately 
in such a way as to foster rather than suppress beggary.””! 
_ Spurred to action by the deepening sense of the neces- 
sity for a re-organization of the system of public char- 
ities, resulting from the experience of the Sanitary As- 
sociation, and convinced that this work ought to be car- 
ried on by secular agencies, a step forward was taken 
by certain public-spirited citizens under the lead of 
Syndic Sillen who, in 1711, organized a department of the 
Sanitary Association, composed of Burgomasters, each of 
whom was assigned to one of the numerous districts into 
which the city was divided for the better care of the poor; 
and it was made the duty of each member of the depart- 
ment to inspect the condition of all destitute persons in 
his district. It was felt that by friendly and efficient 
helpfulness it would be possible to cure rather than 
merely to palliate, the evils of pauperism. The machin- 
ery devised at this time to carry out this policy was too 
imperfect to accomplish any great reform. Still it marked 
a beginning. In the year 1725 the number of poor under 
the care of each district visitor was limited to twenty- 
five. It is recorded that some good was accomplished in 
this way, but that public sentiment was not yet sufficiently 
aducated to make the system successful. This lack was 
destined to be met in a measure at least by the influence 
of the humanitarian wave of the time which was shortly 
to make itself especially felt in Hamburg. The first result 
in Hamburg of this awakening interest was the organiza-| 
tion of an institution for the care of the sick poor. The 
Same humane spirit soon led many to visit the poor in a 
friendly manner, that they might make careful investiga- 
been drawn freely from this source. See also C. R. Henderson, “Mod- 


orn Methods of Charity,” pp. 4-14 (1904). 
*Joseph Henry Crooker, “Problems in American Society,” p. 64 (1889). 


20 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


tions into their condition. It is recorded that in this way, 
-by an experience of several years, a large body of promi- 
‘nent citizens were both interested in the problem of 
pauperism and somewhat trained in actual work among 
the poor before any new organization was effected. 

This experience and its lessons were set forth in 1786 
by Professor J. G. Busch in a widely read popular 
weekly of the day. His insight into the nature of the 
difficulty of abolishing poverty is remarkable, especially 
for his day and generation. “I know well,” he writes, 
“that it is enough to tell many just this fact. Jt takes 
pains, in order to relieve them of all serious thought of a 
fundamental improvement in our system of charity. But 
we must say this; and it is better that all recognize the 
fact than that they should still carelessly think that it is 
a simple matter, and amounts only to enforcing the old 
regulations in order to relieve the city at once of so 
great an evil.” The growing interest in the poor among 
the public-spirited citizens of Hamburg led the next year 
to the re-organization of the system of poor relief. It 
was an elaboration of the germinal principle of personal 
supervision by districts, set forth in 1711. 

It is recorded that in the working out of the organiza- 
tion of the new system, Professor Busch apparently fur- 
nished the personal leadership and enthusiasm while a 
leading Hamburg merchant, Casper Von Voght (1752- 
1839), furnished the organizing genius and administrat- 
ive ability. The principles upon which they worked are 
as recorded by Crooker ! are the following: 

(1) “To create a central bureau to supervise all work 
for the poor, and to bring all charitable agencies under 
one management, in order to prevent ‘overlapping,’ and 
also to put a stop to indiscriminate almsgiving. 

(2) “To subdivide the city into small districts, in each 
of which a competent citizen should personally investi- 
gate the condition of all paupers and semi-paupers, that 

*See footnote to p. 18. 


=. 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 2I 


the exact needs of all might be known, that the deserving 
might be discovered and the undeserving rebuked, and 
that no more relief should be given than was absolutely 
necessary. 

(3) “To remove the causes of distress and pauperism 
by compelling the able-bodied to work, by making the 
homes of the poor more healthy, by providing work for 
the unemployed and by giving an industrial training that 
they might grow up self-dependent citizens.” 


To put these principles into operation an Executive 
Board was organized, composed of five councilmen of the 
‘city, ten supervisors of the poor, chosen from the citi- 
zens at large, and the heads of departments, such as the 
church almoners, the director of the work-house, and the 
‘superintendent of the hospital. Those not ex-officio mem- 
‘bers of the board held office during good behavior or un- 
til they asked for release. The Executive Board had gen- 

eral management of all the charities of the city, it decided 
upon the disposition of all poor relief funds, and it made 
the rules and regulations which governed the conduct of 
those engaged in the friendly visitation of the poor. Be- 
low this Board were the visitors of the poor; of these 
there were three for each district of the city. These 
while working together took each especial care of his own 
group of needy people. They labored without pay, served 
for terms of three years, and were generally kept in office 
until they asked to be relieved. Von Voght’s remark on 
this point is interesting: “The number of wealthy and 
‘respectable men who offered themselves for the severe 
task they were to undergo will forever furnish a bright 
page in the annals of civic virtue in Hamburg.” * Each 
_ *John Duncan in his book on “Collections relative to Systematic 
Relief of the Poor, at different periods and in different countries with 
- observations on charity; its proper objects and conduct and its influ- 
ence on the welfare of nations” (1815), says, p. 82, “Charitable institu- 
‘tions ought, indeed, to prosper in the city of Hamburg. There is so 


much morality amongst its inhabitants that for a time they paid their 
taxes into a sort of trunk, without any person seeing what they 


22 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


district visitor was required to keep himself thoroughly 
informed respecting the condition of the poor under his 
care, of whom he kept a complete list. He was obliged 
to work according to certain printed instructions which, 
among other things, directed him to determine the sani- 
tary condition of the dwellings occupied by the poor; 
the amount of rent charged and the sum due; the number, 
age, sex, physical condition, education and employment 
of the children; the character of the clothing and house- 
hold utensils of the family; the source of support; the 
relatives and their ability to render assistance; the moral 
character and former habits of the parents; and, in fact, 
everything that enters into the social history and descrip- 
tion of such individuals. 

The sixty districts into which the city was divided 
were grouped into ten precincts, there being six districts 
with eighteen visitors in each. This method of organiza- 
tion afforded a channel of communication between the 
district visitors and the Executive Board. At the head of 
the work in each precinct, presided one of the ten citi- 
zens—supervisors, who were members of the Executive 
Board. The district visitor came into immediate con- 
tact with the poor, and reported their condition to the 
precinct superintendent or citizen supervisor, who, with 
the report before him ordinarily decided what course 
should be taken. In complicated cases he referred the 
report to the Executive Board, and awaited its decision. 
Except for cases of emergency the person who deter- 
mined the relief given was not the person who came into 
immediate association with the poor. The decision of 
his superior, which was likely to be in the line of his 
own suggestion, the visitor carried into operation and re- 


ported results. It is of interest to note that these, 


brought; these taxes were to be proportioned to the fortune of each | 
individual, and when the calculation was made they were always found | 
to be scrupulously paid. Might we not believe, that we were relating | 
a circumstance belonging to the Golden Age, if in that Golden Age ' 
there had been private riches and public taxes?” . 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 23 


citizen-supervisors at the head of the work in each pre- 
cinct were obliged to follow certain established principles. 
Von Voght declared it essential in all relief: 


(1) To prevent any man from receiving a shilling 
which he was able to earn for himself. 

(2) To reduce the support given lower than what any 
industrious man or woman in such circumstances could 
earn; for if the manner in which relief is given is not a 
spur to industry, it becomes undoubtedly a premium to 
sloth and profligacy. 


_ The spirit expressed in these lines as well as that ex- 
pressed by Von Voght in his emphasis on the fact that 
comparatively few answers given by the needy are sin- 
cere reveal the advance made in the movement for or- 
‘ganizing charity since his day. 

__ In the carrying out of the general principles of Von 
Voght and his associates, it was soon found that additional 
machinery in the shape of auxiliary institutions was 
needed. One of these was a flax-yarn spinnery which 
served the purpose not only of affording employment to 
those out of work and of giving employment to all needy 
persons who received for any work which they were 
doing less than a bare living support, but also of teaching 
the unskilled the trade. At the end of three months these 
were dismissed with a spinning wheel and a pound of flax. 
The results of this experiment are of interest. “After 
three years, two thousand poor, who at the time they 
entered the school could do nothing at all, did earn from 
18d to 20d a week, at such time and at such hours as 
were formerly quite lost to them; and the din of industry 
was heard where sloth or riot had inhabited before.”’ The 
flax-yarn spinnery also served as a test for the so-called 
“work-shy,” for it is recorded that for a certain period 
out of two hundred and seventy-six who applied for an 
allowance because they could find nothing to do, only 
‘forty accepted the work offered! 


24 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


A hospital for incurables and those aged poor who 
were manifestly helpless was early established. Other 
medical needs of the poor were not overlooked. Pro- 
vision was made to nurse “the deserving” in their own 
homes, the poor at reduced rates and the absolutely desti- 
tute, free. 

The wisdom of these early pioneer social workers is 
seen in the emphasis they placed on the importance of 
“getting hold” of the child early enough. In the words 
of Von Voght: “The most effectual means of preventing 
misery is the better education of the children.” It is sur- 
prising to note how many of their problems and attempts 
at solving them resemble those of a much later date. 
Families were kept together, if possible, by making small 
allowances for the care of young children; but if the 
ignorance or drunkenness of the parents endangered their 
welfare the children under six years of age were boarded 
out ‘‘in the houses of the better sort of poor.” In every 
district a warm room was prepared and furnished with 
bread and milk, “where such parents as go out to work 
may deposit their children during the day, and thus pre- 
vent any obstacle to their own industry or that of their 
elder children.” Reliance, however, was placed chiefly 
upon the free schools, which were provided upon a large 
scale for children between the ages of six and sixteen. 
Every poor family was compelled to send all children 
between these ages to these schools, where they labored 
two-thirds of the time and studied the elementary 
branches one-third of the time. | 

It is not without interest to the student of the move-_ 
ment for the organization of charity to learn that the 
Executive Board of the Hamburg Institution encoun- 
tered difficulty in securing the heart codperation of 
some of the many private charitable foundations which 
abounded in that city in its attempt to prevent “over- 
lapping” or, as it was then voiced, to prevent one person 


*Joseph Henry Crooker, “Problems in American Society,” p. 81. 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 25 


‘receiving “two supports.” In view of the question of 
finance ever present with the private charities of to-day 


it is of further interest to note the source of financial sup- 


port then obtaining in Hamburg. It was both public and 


private as the following list of sources shows: 


(a) Certain public taxes. 
(b) One-half of what was collected in the church poor- 


boxes. 


(c) A subscription taken up annually by prominent 


citizens among their neighbors. 


(d) Weekly collections taken by the district visitors 


from house to house among those who did not make 


-annual subscriptions. 


(e) The contents of three thousand poor boxes kept 


in as many families, “in order that their children or 


their servants may have an opportunity of indulging 
their pity; and where, in the midst of conviviality, many 
a collection is made for the poor.” 


It is further remarkable to record that all the essen- 
tial details of the foregoing plan of dealing with the poor 
were first carefully thought out and then inaugurated 
(1788) by the publication and wide circulation of bul- 
letins or circulars of information and instruction which 
were put by the thousand into the hands of the general 
public. These circulars described in minute detail the 
whole system so that he who ran might read. It further- 
more called upon the public to co-operate in making the 
plan a success, Such cooperation included the obeying 
of the municipal law forbidding almsgiving at the door 


or on the street, and the reporting of all cases of distress 


to the proper visitor. 
It is of special interest to note that during the early 
years of the Hamburg experiment it was thought desirable 


_to take three important additional steps. 


(1) Free lodging houses for transients, who, after hav- 


26 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


ing been given a thorough sanitary inspection, were at the 
end of three days sent out of the city or compelled to 
work. 

(2) The appointment in 1797 of a special supervisor 
to secure as far as possible improved dwellings “for the 
poor.” To aid his work in this direction, a “loan-fund” 
was created from which the poor could borrow money 
without interest, to be used in building houses, and to be 
paid back in small sums. The managers of the fund to 
accommodate the poor met on Sundays. | 

(3) The opening in r8o01 of an infant school for the 
care and instruction of the very young children of the 
poor. 

At the end of thirteen years, in 1801, the results ac- 
complished by this Hamburg system of poor-relief were 
noteworthy. 

‘““Beggary had been completely exterminated; a vast 
amount of terrible wretchedness had been relieved and 
much more prevented; many poor had been furnished 
work, and many had been taught a trade and made self- 
dependent; while in the free schools ‘gentle means and_ 
perseverance got at last the better of a great part of 
the vices that grow in children who are trained up to 
beggary.’ In 1788 there were 5,166 paupers in a terri- 
ble condition; in 1801 there were only 2,689, and these 
were in a comfortable condition. In 1788 there were} 
2,225 children paupers; in 1801 there were only 400 chil- 
dren paupers, and they were being cared for in ae 
or hospitals, or were being trained in schools. And the 
amount of money spent annually to give the poor this bet- 
ter care was really not nearly so large as the sum prac- 
‘tically thrown away before 1788.” } 

In the stormy times from 1801 to 1825 the work was 
often interrupted and pauperism gained a new foothold 
in Hamburg. At length, the municipality was obliged id 
assume the entire expense of the system. 

* Joseph H. Crooker, “Problems in American Society,” p. 85. 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 27 


It would seem that Von Voght travelled extensively for 
| nearly two years in England and Scotland soon after the 
Hamburg system was started, and in these countries he 
made the acquaintance of many public-spirited citizens 
to whom he described the institution at Hamburg. An 
Account of the Management of the Poor, was printed in 
1796 at London, and widely circulated. 
= ‘ Lhere is ample evidence,” says Crooker, that this 
, work “had a remarkable influence in Great Britain, and 
that it revolutionized public sentiment there upon the 
. subject of poor-relief; while it did more than anything 
else to create that public opinion which led to the reform 
of the poor-laws in 1832.” Malthus’ Essay on the Prin- 
ciple of Population was first printed in 1798, two years 
_after Von Voght’s pamphlet was published. He refers to 
_this pamphlet in words of highest praise, calling the Ham- 
‘burg Institution “the most successful of any yet estab- 
lished. ” So great was the impression made by this 
-pamphlet, and so high was the estimation in which it was 
held, that its re-publication was secured in 1817, by a 
Eommittee chiefly composed of prominent merchants and 
business men of London. In their dedication the com- 
mittee state: ‘The pamphlet contained such evidence 
of the benevolence and profound political wisdom of 
its author, and so much valuable information founded on 
experience that we were satisfied we could not render a 
more essential benefit to society, at the present crisis, 
than by reprinting and circulating it.” 
_ Crooker, to whom we are indebted for much of the fore- 
going account of the Hamburg system, believes that 
there is no doubt that Chalmers, of whose work among 
the poor of Glasgow, we shall presently speak, obtained 
from this source many valuable suggestions if not also 
much needed inspiration.! 
Von Voght’s influence was far-reaching on the con- 
tinent as well. He is recorded as having travelled up and 








*See pp. 33-38. 


28 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


down Europe endeavoring to bring the charitable insti- : 
tutions of Vienna, Berlin, Paris and Marseilles into line | 
with the Hamburg system. No less than twenty cities 

of Germany imitated the Hamburg experiment. One of 

these twenty German cities was Munich where Count 

Rumford in 1790, as we shall presently see, took vigorous 

steps to suppress vagrancy and to give a more efficient 

relief to the poor. It seems not at all unlikely that Count 

Rumford borrowed freely from the ideas already worked 

out in Hamburg by Von Voght. 


THE CONTRIBUTION OF COUNT RUMFORD 


To recount the main incidents of the life of Benjamin 
Thompson, better known to the world under his Bavarian 
title of Count Rumford, would take us too far afield.? 
Born in the little town of Woburn, near Boston, Massa- 
chusetts, in the year 1753, the story of his life carries 
one to England, to Bavaria, again to England and finally 
to France. In 1784 he took up his residence in Munich 
where he was to hold many responsible official positions 
under the Elector of Bavaria. The Bavaria that Count 
Rumford first knew was in a sad condition; the country 
was poor, wasted by war and neglect; the army was cor- 
rupt and inefficient; schools were lacking; there were 
more convents than factories, and industry was not in 
high repute. Along the highways in the country almost 
every person one met on foot held out his hand for alms, 
while in the cities, “professional beggars invaded. the 
churches and houses, and besieged the people in the street, 
exposing loathsome sores, and exciting pity by means of 


*For further details of the interesting and varied career of Count 
Rumford see Ellis, “Life of Count Rumford,” (1871) ; Edwin E. Slosson, 
“Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford,” pp. 9-50, of Leading American 
Men of Science, edited by David Starr Jordan (1910); Elizabeth Gil- 
man, “Count Rumford and his Work,” Charities Review, Vol. VI, p. 
218 (1807). 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 29 


naimed and ill-used children.” 1 The beggars not only 
degged but they extorted and stole from those whom 
chey considered their lawful prey. Laws against them 
existed, as in most civilized communities, but the beg- 
zars were a law unto themselves. In the large towns, 
2ach one had his own district, in the possession of which 
it was not thought lawful to disturb him, and vacancies 
caused by deaths, removals or promotion were filled by 
cule. 

In Munich there were 2,600 beggars or indigent per- 
30ns out of a total population of but 60,000. The city 
which was overrun with a class of vagabonds whom 
the police were unable to control, was but typical of con- 
ditions generally. “The city government was taxed to 
its utmost to feed a pauper class which it had created, 
and to provide prisons for a criminal class which had 
grown out of the pauper, and the mendicant had become 
50 bold, that the citizen from fear yielded to his de- 
mands.’ 

It did not take Count Rumford long to reach the con- 
clusion that the then existing church, through its well 
intentioned but ill judged system of alms-giving, had 
raised up a pauper spirit which it could not lay. 

It must be said to the credit of Count Rumford that 
instead of punishment or moral suasion, he recommended 
the improvement of conditions, first, by providing food 
and employment for every man, woman and child, on the 
theory that only when this is done can penalties against 
vagrancy be enforced. Accordingly, he began by estab- 
lishing a House of Industry ® in Munich, sheltered in a 
large and handsome building. Here work suited to the 


* Edwin E, Slosson, “Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford,” in Leading 
American Men of Science, edited by David Starr Jordan, p. 29 (1910). 

*John Glenn, “Coéperation Against Beggary,’ The Charities Review, 
Vol. I, p. 70 (18091). 

*It was called the “military workhouse” because it was a manu- 
factory of clothing chiefly for the army and was under the control 
of the council of war. 


30 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


capacity of all, from the aged and infirm to the youngest, 
was to be provided with instruction if necessary. Pay- 
ment was to be made in money for all work performed. 
The work was piece-work and those who earned the most 
during the week were to receive additional rewards Satur- 
day evening so that there was to be every inducement for 
steady performance. A good free dinner was to be pro- 
vided daily. The workrooms were large and com- 
modious, well ventilated and lighted throughout and fitted 
up in the neatest and most comfortable manner, even to 
the point of elegance. In the passage leading to the 
paved court was an inscription in letters of gold upon a 
black ground, “No alms will be received here.” 

When all was prepared for his plan to rid the city of 
Munich of its beggars, Count Rumford was made head 
of the police of the city as their services were essential. 
He asked for the support of the Church and the priest- 
hood placed itself at his side. He asked for the support 
of the citizens, and the citizens gladly responded by 
assisting him in person. The description of the put- 
ting of his program into operation cannot better be told 
than in Count Rumford’s own words: ‘We were hardly 
got into the street, when we were accosted by a beggar 
who asked us for alms. I went up to him, and, laying 
my hand gently upon his shoulder, told him that thence- 
forward begging would not be permitted in Munich; that 
if he really stood in need of assistance (which would be 
immediately inquired into) the necessary assistance should 
certainly be given him, but that beggary was forbidden; 
and, if he was detected in it again, he would be severely 
punished. I then delivered him over to an order-ser- 
geant. Having arrested the first beggar with his own 
hands, he requested the officers and magistrates to follow 
his example and to persuade others to do the same. These 
gentlemen consented. They dispersed to the different 
parts of the town, and, with the aid of the military, did 
their work so effectively that in less than one hour not a 


i 


‘ 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 31 


beggar was to be found upon the streets. Those arrested 
were taken to the town hall, and their names and ad- 
dresses taken, after which they were dismissed and told 
to return the next day to the new ‘military workhouse” 
where warm rooms, a good dinner and work for those who 
could perform it would be provided. A committee would 
be immediately formed to investigate their circumstances, 
and relief would be given to those unable to work.” ? 
Money was collected from all classes of the community 
for the relief of the indigent, by employment and alms. 
Count Rumford spared no pains in the administration of 
the House.of Industry. He devised a system of keeping 
accounts very much like those now in use in modern fac- 
tories. Every piece of yarn transferred from one room 
to another, every loaf of stale bread collected from the 
bakers, had to be duly recorded on printed blanks. To 
his credit it may be recorded that although handicapped 
by being compelled to start with so large a number of 
absolutely untrained work-people the experiment was 
successful financially as well as philanthropically, the 
workhouse soon becoming self-supporting. ‘The beggar 
before untaught and uncared for, accepted the idea of 
moral elevation and was transformed into a useful citi- 
zen, recognizing the possibility of self-support and realiz- 
ing it.”* In five years he practically abolished beggary 
in Bavaria. 

It is interesting to note here the theory of philanthropy 
of one motivated by a hatred alike of idleness and waste 
who played so successfully the réle of a benevolent despot. 
“When precepts fail,” writes Count Rumford, ‘habits 
may sometimes be successful. To make vicious and aban- 
doned people happy, it has generally been supposed, first, 
‘to make them virtuous. But why not reverse this order! 
‘Why not make them first Happy, and then virtuous! If 
1 Elizabeth Gilman, “Count Rumford and his work,” Charities Review, 
Vol. VI, p. 216 (1897). 


? John Glenn, “Codperation Against Beggary,” The Charities Review, 
Vol. I, p. 70 (1891). 






32 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


happiness and virtue be imseparable, the end will be as 
certainly obtained by the one method as by the other; 
and it is most undoubtedly much easier to contribute to 
the happiness and comfort of persons in a state of poverty 
and misery than by admonitions and punishment to re- 
form their morals.” ? 

In his wise handling of the problem of vagrancy, Count 
Rumford anticipated in many particulars, the best work 
that is being done to-day to solve that problem. In his in- 
sistence, in all charitable work, on a systematic assistance 
to self-support, ‘strict bookkeeping and publicity of ac- 
counts, he anticipated the development of modern charity 
by almost a century, while “in the tact with which he se- 
cured the cooperation of the whole community, including 
the authorities of army, church and state, prominent citi- 
zens of the middle classes, and the poor themselves,” he 
has had unfortunately few imitators.” ? The influence of 
his work on the development of the charity organization 
in America has been both indirect and direct. Robert M. 
Hartley, the father of a movement resulting in the found- 
ing during the forties and fifties of associations for im- 
proving the condition of the poor,—forerunners of our 
present charity organization societies—writes with hearty 
approval of his methods of work,* while John Glenn of 
Baltimore, one of the pioneers of the American charity 
organization movement, was a careful student of Count 
Rumiford’s work in behalf of the poor of Munich.°® 


* Quoted by Edwin E. Slosson in his article on Benjamin Thompson, 
Count Rumford, See Leading American Men of Science, edited by David 
Starr Jordan, p. 30. 

“It is said that he took much satisfaction in telling that when he 
was dangerously sick in Munich he was awakened by hearing the con- 
fused noise of the prayers of a multitude of people who were passing 
in the street, and was told that it was the poor of Munich who were 
going to the church to put up public prayers for him, “a private 
person, a stranger, a Protestant.” 

* Edwin E. Slosson, “Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford,” See Lead- 
ing American Men of Science, edited by David Starr Jordan, psi, 

*Memorial of Robert M. Hartley (1882), p. 377. 

*Elizabeth Gilman, “Count Rumford and his Work, ” Charities Re- 
view, Vol. VI, p. 218 (1897). 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 33 


THE CONTRIBUTION OF THOMAS CHALMERS 


Of the precursors of the charity organization move- 
ment few have had _a greater influence than Thomas 
Chalmers—a pioneer in the ranks of the Protestant 
church in the field of scientific charity... Born in 1790, 
educated for the ministry, he entered the service of the 
church where he soon gained distinction as an eloquent 
and powerful pulpit orator. The poor of Glasgow were 
clamoring at the time for the introduction of public out- 
door relief. Believing that such relief served as an in- 
‘ducement for many to apply for aid who really did not 
need it, and that the “relief of the poor from public funds 
resulted in taking money from the thrifty and giving it 
to the thriftless,”’ Chalmers opposed the popular demand. 
‘The meagre grants which such a fund could provide, he 
urged, inevitably were disappointing and led to grumb- 
ling and jealousy amongst the people. Chalmers lost 
his heroic fight? against the introduction of outdoor 
relief into Glasgow but succeeded in gaining permission 
to abolish it in the parish of St. John, which was especially 
created that he might try out his plan of doing without 
public outdoor relief. Those who lived in this parish, 
however, were still taxed for its maintenance elsewhere 
in the city. 

The district, numbering 10,000 souls, was composed 
largely of working people, and was one of the poorest 
of the city. For this parish he proposed to take entire 
charge of all outdoor relief, meeting the expense by 
collections for the poor. He required charities of the 
‘city not to invade his domain. In turn, he agreed not to 
-1+Edward T. Devine, commenting editorially in The Survey (October 
28, 1911), on Chalmer’s concept of an “invisible relief fund,” writes that 
it “has been tested by experience; and has been a main factor on the 
economic side in the later development of the theory of charitable 
relief. It is a conception which, although not sufficient to account in 
full for the modern philanthropy, is yet one of its essential elements.” 


- ?Thomas Chalmers, “The Christian and Civic Economy of Large 
Towns” (1821-1826). 


34 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


send any applicant for relief to them. He divided his 
parish into twenty-five districts. A deacon was appointed 
to take charge of each district.1 Whenever relief was 
asked for, investigation was made ‘“‘to discriminate and 
beneficially assist the really necessitous and deserving 
poor, to diminish and ultimately extinguish pauperism, 
and to foster amongst the poor the habits of industry, 
providence, frugality, saving and honest desire to rise in 
the world, and simple dependence on their own exer- 
tions.” * Every boy was to be taught to read, and every 
girl to sew. In no instance was the visitor to give alms 
except in cases of extreme necessity. At all times, use 
was to be made of other means of relief besides money 
grants, such as eliciting the resources of the poor them} 
selves. 

Such was the wisdom and skill with which his whole 
scheme was carried out that all new cases of distress in 
his parish are said to have been cared for with about $400 
a year, secured by Sunday evening collections for the poor. 
“In a population of ten thousand, but twenty new cases 


1It will be noted that this assignment of a visitor to a district was 
not copied by American charity organization societies. In Boston, for 
example, the visitor was assigned to a family or families, and he kept 
up the personal relationship wherever they moved if practical. 

The 10,000 persons of the parish apportioned to the 25 districts 
makes 400 per district. This means all, not the poor alone. In his 
book, “The Sufficiency of the Parochial System without a Poor Rate” 
(1841), Chalmers says that one visitor could take 300 families. This 
would be at ieast 900 to 1000 persons. It is evident that the relationship 
in such cases could not have been that implied in “friendly visiting,” 
destined to be so much stressed by charity organization societies. 

*In reference to the question of saving banks for the benefit of the 
poor, it is illuminating to read Chalmers’ words, “An apprehension 
has been felt, in certain quarters, lest savings banks should arm the 
mechanic and workmen of our land with a dangerous power.” See his 
“Christian and Civic Economy,” ii, 233n; iii, 112; 265. 

“The first savings bank of the modern self-sustaining type that was 
actually put into operation is credited to the Rev. Henry Duncan, who 
in 1810 established a ‘parish bank’ to relieve and prevent the poverty 
of his parishioners at Ruthwell in Dumfriesshire, Scotland.” The Survey, 
October 7, 1916, p. 30, a résumé of an historical review of the rise 
and progress of savings banking by Edward L. Robinson. 

* Thomas Chalmers, “The Sufficiency of the Parochial System without 
a Poor Rate” (1841). 4 


: 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS a5 


rose in four years, of which five were the results of il- 
egitimate births or family desertion, and two of disease. 
The cost of their relief was but $175 a year. In a few 
rears the established pauperism of the parish sank from 
Mer oO. . 2.7’ + 

The philosophy that underlies Chalmer’s plan for the 
elief of distress is well expressed in the following words 
»f Charles S. Loch, until recently the venerable general 
secretary of the London Charity Organization Society: 
‘Society is a growing, self-supporting organism. It has 
‘vith it, as between family and family, neighbor and 
peighbor, master and employé, endless links of sympathy 
ind self-support. Poverty is not an absolute but a rela- 
‘ive term. Naturally the members of one class help one 
‘mother; the poor help the poor. 
’ There is thus a large invisible fund available and con- 
stantly used by those who, by their proximity to one 
nother, know best how to help. The philanthropist is 
in alien to this life around him. Moved by a sense of a 
contrast between his own lot, as he understands it, and 
he lot of those about him, whom he but little under- 
itands, he concludes that he should relieve them. But his 
rift, unless it be given in such a way as to promote this 
elf-support, instead of awakening it, is really injurious. 
‘n the first place, by his interference he puts a check on 
he charitable resources of another class and lessens their 
social energy. What he gives they do not give, though 
hey might do so. But next, he does more harm than 
his. He stimulates expectation, so that by a false arith- 
netic his gift of a few shillings seems to those who re- 
elve it and to those who hear of it a possible source 
of help in any difficulty. To them it represents a large 
‘ommand of means: and where one has received what, 
| hough it be little, is yet, relative to wage, a large sum to 
.9€ acquired without labor, many will seek more, and 















4D. O. Kellogg, “The Pauper Question,” Reports and Papers, C. O. S. 
of New York City, No. 17, p. 16 (July, 1883). 


36 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


with that object will waste their time and be put off theit 
work, or even be tempted to lie and cheat. So social 
energy is diverted from its proper use. Alms thus given 
weakens social ties, diminishes the natural relief funds 
of mutual help, and beggars a neighbor, instead of bene- 
fiting him.” ? 

It is no detraction from the credit due to Chalmer: 
to point out that not all of his work was without prec- 
edent. His principle of dividing up a great city intc 
“\ what he called “manageable portions of civic territory’ 
was not original, as we have seen. He drove home, how. 
ever, with peculiar emphasis, both by precept and exam: 
ple the stimulating psychological effect of a job of man: 
_ageable size. ‘There is a very great difference,” write: 
Chalmers, “‘in respect to its practical influence betweer 
a task that is indefinite and a task that is clearly seer 
to be overtakable. The one has the effect to paralyze 
the other to quicken exertion.” ‘The genius of Chalmer: 
is Shown in the simplicity of the organization of his plan 
in his belief in the inherent power of people to aid them: 
selves, his emphasis on the importance of character in th¢ 
poor,” in his emphasis on intercourse with the poor— 
doing things with them rather than for them—and in hi: 
protest against generalization without accurate observa: 
tion. “Do not generalize except from facts accurately ob 
served and carefully noted,” warns Chalmers, time anc 
again. “It is the besetting sin of the ardent philanthro- 
pist to generalize under the influence of an alarmist anc 
over-heated imagination. Let us at least be definite.” ‘ 
Probably his genius is most definitely shown in his non: 
reliance on special relief schemes, due to his convictior 
that neighborly assistance, unlike relief from a precol 
lected relief fund does not tend to atrophy the indi 


*The Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, article on “Charity ant 
Charities.” 

*C. S. Loch, “Poor Relief in Scotland,” Journal of the Royal Statis 
tical Society (June, 1898), pp. 302-30. 

°C. S. Loch, “Dr. Chalmers and Charity Organization,” Charity Or 
ganization Review, August, 1897, p. 65. 


sistance as this, 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 37 


vidual’s will and ability to be self-supporting. ‘‘Such as- 
” writes Dr. Devine, “has many advan- 
tages over that given by organized societies. There is 
little probability of imposition, of excessive relief, or of 
relief that is ill-adapted to its purpose, such as is com- 
mon in the wholesale distribution made by public officials, 
and which sometimes shows itself in the work of private 


agencies.” + Whether throwing the responsibility for re- 


lief entirely upon the resources of immediate neighbors 
is an adequate plan for other than homogenous communi- 
ties, it has been generally recognized by leaders 2 in the 
ranks of charity organization, past and present, that “‘in- 
formal neighborly assistance is always to be given a liberal 
recognition” * as an element in the instinctive and unor- 
ganized methods by which every community distributes 


among its members the shock of unexpected want. 


In view of all the foregoing it seems incredible that 
Chalmers’ plan of meeting the problem of poverty in St. 
John’s parish was destined to be abandoned. This, how- 
ever, did not occur until 1837, fourteen years after its 


founder had removed to Edinburgh: The fact that those 


living in the parish were taxed for the maintenance of 
public outdoor relief elsewhere is doubtless one of the rea- 
sons for the abandonment of the plan. There appear 
to have been more immediate reasons, however, which 
are probably sufficient in themselves to explain it. There 


*Edward T. Devine, “Relief and Care of the Poor in Their Homes,” 
Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 230 (1900). 

*See Mrs. Charles Russell Lowell, “Duties of Friendly Visitors.” 

Dr. Devine believes the conception of Dr. Chalmers on which the 
parochial system of St. John’s, Glasgow, was founded is one of the 
“essential elements” of modern philanthropy—see editorial under cap- 
tion, “Social Forces,” in The Survey, for October 28, ror. 

Mrs. John M. Glenn believes his “principles sound and enduring. 
Society failed because it was not yet. ripe for his noble ideal of a 
world without a pauper.”—‘‘He placed his principles in clear light, 
urged them with persuasive eloquence, demonstrated their value by the 


_ Scientific process of verification, and by costly and self-sacrificing experi- 
ment.” From an unpublished address. 


*Edward T. Devine, “Relief and Care of the Poor in Their Homes,” 


Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 230 (1900). 


38 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


was first the disruption of the church. Chalmers’ scheme 
of charity largely depended on the church having an 
accepted relation to all the people of the parish. More- 
over the new Scotch poor-law hampered his work. 

Though Chalmers’ experiment came to an end, the in- 
fluence of many of his ideas has lived on. The majority 
of the principles and methods that have been referred to 
as characterizing his genius have since been incor- 
porated into the body of principles of charity organi- 
zation.” 


THE CONTRIBUTION OF 
FREDERICK OZANAM AND SYLVAIN BAILLY 


In 1833 a young and zealous Catholic student of law 
at the Sorbonne in Paris, in order to meet the criticisms 
of the followers of the French reformer, St. Simon, that 
the Catholic Church really did nothing for the poor, per- 
suaded seven of his companions to organize for the more 
effectual aid of the needy. This little band of eight under- 
graduates, with Ozanam as their leader, met in the back. 
room of a printing office in Paris and organized the first 
conference of St. Vincent de Paul. It would not be cor- 
rect to suppose that when Ozanam arranged with his com- 
panions to meet weekly for the practice of good works 
he had conceived the plan of the Society of St. Vincent 
de Paul as it subsequently developed.* Nevertheless it 


1C_S. Loch, “Poor Relief in Scotland,” Journal of the Royal Statistica! 
Society, June, 1898, pp. 302-30. 

2C. S. Loch writes in 1910 under the caption, “Progress of Thought 
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,” in his book, “Charity and 
Social Life,” p. 345; “But perhaps, in regard to charity in Great Britain, 
the most important change has been the revival of the teaching of Dr. 
Chalmers (1780-1847), who (1819) introduced a system of parochial 
charity at St. John’s, Glasgow, on independent lines, consistent with 
the best traditions of the Scottish Church.” ; 

* John Rochford, “Frederick Ozanam,” pp. 19 and 20 (1913), “So far 
was this from being the fact, that when one of the members proposed 
a friend for admission to the Conference,” writes the author, “the 
strongest objections were made to allowing any one else to intrude 
within the circle of intimate friends of which the Conference was 
comprised. Eventually, however, they gave way and admitted the 





FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 39 


was to these efforts of Frederick Ozanam to show the 


reality of his Christian faith that the Society of St. Vin- 
cent de Paul owes its birth. 

_ While the suggestion which led to organization of the 
first conference came from Ozanam, it is likely that the 
method and spirit of the society came from Pére Bailly, 
a journalist who befriended them and gave them not only 


‘the use of his printing shop for their meeting, but also 


BY 
b 


: 


$ 


5 


: 


many helpful suggestions.1* By the skeptical, Ozanam 
and his companions were asked: ‘But what do you hope 
to do? You are only eight poor young men and you ex- 
pect to relieve the misery that abounds ‘in a city like 
Paris! Why, if you counted any number of members 
you could do but comparatively nothing.” ! It was true 
that they had but little money and their collections at 
their meetings amounted to but a few sous. Pére Bailly 
reminded them, however, that there was something worth 
even more to the poor, namely, that moral assistance 
which they could give. ‘If you intend the work to be 
really efficacious, if you are in earnest about serving the 
poor as well as yourselves,” wrote their councillor, “you 


proposed candidate. Other admissions soon followed, so that by August 
the Conference included about fifteen members.’ [bid., p. 20. 

*See “The Letters of Frederick Ozanam,” translated by Ainslie Coates, 
Chapter V (1886). Bailly was first president of the Council-General, 


Serving for 11 years. His successor speaks of him as founder, mod- 
- erator, and father of the society. See p. 277, “Manual of the Society 


( 


| 


of St. Vincent de Paul,” edition 1909, Paris. 

*Bougand in his “History of St. Vincent de Paul,” p. 211, says 
the Society of St. Vincent de Paul “is sometimes thought a birth of 
our day, but is in reality a revival of this great movement of charity.” 
Bailly in a circular of December, 1842, writes: “You are aware that 
those thoughts are taken from the most intimate writings of St. 
Vincent de Paul, from the rules which he laid after many years’ experi- 
ence, for the blessed works that he had instituted, and to secure their 


increase and duration,” p. 252, “Manual of the Society of St. Vincent 


de Paul,” edition 1009, Paris. It is of interest to note.in this connec- 


tion that some of the young men who comprised the first conference 


Of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul went to the well-known Sister 
of Charity (Rosalie Rendu), who instructed them “in visiting the 


“} 
: 


7 


poor.” See “The Letters of Frederick Ozanam,” translated by Ainslie 
Coates, Chapter V (1886). 

? “Lettres de Frédéric Ozanam,” 1831-1853, Tome Premier septi¢me 
Edition (1891), p. 76. 


i 


40 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


must not let it be a mere doling out of alms, bringing 
your pittance of money or food; you must make it a 
medium of moral assistance, you must give them the alms 
of good advice.” + He suggested to his young friends that 
much could be done to remedy misery and distress ‘“‘by 
placing their education, their intelligence, their special 
knowledge of law and science, and their general knowl- 
edge of life at the disposal of the poor; that instead of 
only taking them some little material relief, they should 
strive to win their confidence, learn all about their af- 
fairs, and then see how they could best help them to help 
themselves. ‘Most of you are studying to be lawyers,’ he 
said, ‘some to be doctors, etc. Go and help the poor, 
each in your special line; let your studies be of use to 
others as well as to yourselves; it is a good and easy way 
of commencing your apostolate as Christians in the 
world.’ ” ? 

The disciples soon caught the spirit of their friend and 
guide. They visited the poor in their own houses, each 
member visiting two or three families a week. Receliv- 
ing-places were established for old clothes, old furniture, 
etc. Medical services were given where needed. Work 
was procured for those who had none. “The members 
interested themselves in all classes of the poor and miser- 
able, from the infants in créches to the condemned to 
death in the prisons; and they followed the funerals of 
those who died. .. . In fact, the whole extent of the 
needs of the poor seems to have been in a measure con- 
sidered by this association, either from its first beginnings 
or later.” ? Bearing in mind the teaching of Pere Bailly 
and the spirit with which Ozanam organized the new 
society, it is not surprising that in so doing he discour- 


* Charities, Vol. III, p. 17 (1899). 

*Kathleen O’Meara, “Life and Works of Frederick Ozanam,” quoted 
by Locke, Jesse Albert, “Frederic Ozanam,” Charities Review, Vol. IX, 
p. 74 (1899). 

*“The Letters of Frederick Ozanam,’” translated by Ainslie Coates, 
Chapter V (1886). 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 4I 


-aged indiscriminate giving and insisted upon an inves- 
tigation of all cases, and that ‘‘friendly visiting’ was made 
the cornerstone of the new society; moral uplifting and 
encouragement to self-help having first place,—alms-giv- 
ing being secondary. He took his stand on the universal 
nature of charity; there was to be no religious test in the 
distribution of alms to those in need. 

In a letter written in 1834, one year after the founding 
of the new society, Ozanam declared that he longed “‘to 
see all young men who have intelligence and heart united 
in some scheme of charity, that thus a vast and generous 
association for the relief of the poorer classes might be 
formed all over the country.” + Twenty years after the 
establishment of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, its foun- 
der said with his dying breath: ‘‘Instead of eight visitors, 
we have grown to two thousand in Paris alone and we 
visit there five thousand families.” * This meant that 
they were reaching probably 20,000 individuals—over 
one-fourth of all the poor of the city. There were five 
hundred conferences in France, and the movement had 
spread into England, Spain, Belgium, and even Jerusa- 
lem.* 

The rules of the Society to-day, which are practically 
the same as those adopted by the first conference estab- 
lished by Ozanam in 1833, throw much light on the meth- 
ods and purposes of the society. ‘Red-tape-ism” is 
avoided as much as possible, but certain fundamental 
tules are to govern. Thus, expenditures are for relief 
only, and the relief is to be given promptly and from 
funds voted by the conference only, not from the vis- 
itor’s own purse. These funds are to be collected secretly 


1“Tettres de Frédéric Ozanam,”’ 1831-1853, Tome Premier septiéme 
édition (1891), pp. 114, IIS. 

SOD. cit., p. 76. 

*In 1914 there were 6,000 conferences of this same society, scattered 
throughout all quarters of the globe, with one hundred thousand active 
and one hundred thousand honorary members. The figures are an 
estimate. See “Report of the Superior Council of New York to the 
Council-General in Paris,” for the year 1914, p. 90 (1915). 


42 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


from its members and no one himself in need is to be a 
member. Visits are to be made in the home. The vis- 
itors are to go in couples. The number of families to 
each two visitors is not limited. It is usually. gov- 
erned by the number of families to be cared for and 
the number of members connected with the respective 
conferences. There is a register of poor which contains 
detailed information from each member. Records of all! 
families visited are kept exclusively for the information 
of the members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, 
no publicity being given to the conditions of the poor 
who may be in need of the assistance of the society. 

The attitude of mind with which visitors are enjoined 
to approach their work is so excellently revealed in the 
following words of Ozanam that they are quoted in full: 


“Help is humiliating when it appeals to men from 
below, taking heed of their material wants only, paying 
attention but to those ‘of the flesh, to the cry of hunger 
and cold, to what excites pity, to what one succors even 
in the beast. It humiliates when there is no reciprocity, 
when you give the poor man nothing but bread or clothes 
or a bundle of straw; what, in fact, there is no likeli- 
hood of his ever giving you in return. But it honors, 
when it appeals to him from above, when it occupies itself 
with his soul, with his religious, moral and political edu- 
cation, with all that emancipates him from his passions 
and from a portion of his wants, with those things that 
make him free and make him great. Help honors when 
to the bread that nourishes, it adds the visit that con- 
soles, the advice that enlightens; the friendly shake of 
the hand that lifts up the sinking courage; when it treats 
the poor man with respect, not only as an equal but a 
superior since he is capable of suffering what we perhaps 
are incapable of suffering, since he is the messenger of 

*The registering of cases with a social service exchange (see p. 113) 


is ae as a violation of this rule of the society and so is not prac- 
ticed. 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 43 


God to us, sent to prove our justice and our charity and 
to save us by our works. Help then becomes honorable, 
but it may become mutual, because every man who gives 
a kind word of advice, a consolation to-day may, to- 
morrow, stand himself in need of a kind word, advice 
and consolation; because the hand that you clasp, clasps 
yours in return; because that indigent family you love, 
loves you in return and will have largely acquitted them- 
‘selves toward you when the old men, the mothers and the 
little children shall have prayed for you.” ! 

One cannot understand the essential nature of the 
Society of St. Vincent de Paul without realizing that the 
purpose is not chiefly charitable but “the sanctification 


of its members.” * Although no work of charity is foreign 


to the society, especially its avowed object of visiting 


‘the poor, it is clear that “to unite in a communion of 
‘prayers” is equally, if not even more the object of the 
‘society. The foregoing did not, however, prevent 


Ozanam and Bailly (nor their followers to-day) from 


doing much unselfish work in the interest of others. 


As in the case of other pioneers in the field of philan- 


thropy, the work of Ozanam and Bailly was destined to 


influence the subsequent expression of the charitable 
spirit of the age. The emphasis placed by charity or- 
ganizationists on friendly visiting received encourage- 


oe Ozanam. “Words of the Wise,” Charities, Vol. III, p. 17 
1899) 

*See 2d and sth paragraphs of entice notes under Article I, 
and the first under Article II of ‘Manual of the Society of St. Vincent 
de Paul.” 

*See explanatory notes on both Articles I and II of the Manual. 

The following are the objects of a St. Vincent de Paul conference as 
stated by the Superior Council of New York: ‘First, to sustain its 
members by mutual example in the practice of a Christian life; second, 
to visit the poor in their dwellings, relieving their temporal wants and 
affording them religious consolation; third, to teach catechism to the 
children of the poor; fourth, to foster the forms of charitable works 
Springing from these.” See “Instructions for Forming Conferences, So- 


ciety of St. Vincent de Paul, Superior Council of New York (1011), p. 3. 


*“The Life of Frederic Ozanam,” by Kathleen O’Meara, is among 
the works of pioneers mentioned by Gurteen in his “Handbook of 


_ Charity Organization,” the first book published dealing with the charity 
_ Organization movement in the United States (1882). 


44 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


ment from the success which attended this phase of 
Ozanam’s and Bailly’s work ! while the use of a district 
conference to guide and ‘help friendly visitors, a plan 
emphasized by all the pioneer charity organization socie- 
ties, doubtless found its prototype in the “‘conferences” 
of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.? 


THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE ELBERFELD SYSTEM 


Although 1853 is the date popularly associated with 
the establishment of the ‘“Elberfeld system,” the work 
launched that year was but a renaissance of a similar 
movement begun over fifty years earlier. 

“The care of the poor in Elberfeld,’ writes Herr 
Ernst, one-time president of the board of charities of 
that city, “was until 1800 chiefly under the control of the 
church. At that time a board of charity was formed 
among the citizens independent of the church, in order to 
check the increasing beggary! Each of the three parishes 
chose two citizens, and these six constituted this civil 
board of charity. These divided the work among them- 
selves, and settled all questions in common, one of the 
members presiding. Beggary and giving at the door 


*It should be recalled in this connection that a conference of the 
Society of St. Vincerit de Paul was established in New York City as early 
as 1846. By 1876 there were 204 Conferences under the Council of 
New York. 

In a paper on “District Conferences,” in which the writer, Mrs. 
James T. Fields, one of the pioneers of the Boston Associated Charities, 
emphasized the value of “visitors” in the work of charity organization, 
it is stated that many suggestions in charity organization have been 
derived from the St. Vincent de Paul Society, Reports and Papers, 
CiO.S. of N.Y. (May, 1882), No 23. -p) 

Writing in 1886 on “What Shall We do for the Poor,” D. O. Kellogg, 
another of the early leaders, acknowledges the debt of charity organiza- 
tion societies to Sylvan Bailly, of Paris, along with other predecessors, 
without the combined labors of whom “Charity Organization now 
would be impracticable.” Lend-a-Hand, Vol. I, p. 18 (1886). 

* Writing in 1880, Robert Treat Paine, Jr. President of the Asso- 
ciated Charities of Boston, said: ‘The Catholics claim, I think with 
justice, that the credit is due their admirable society of St. Vincent 
de Paul, of making the counsels of a conference an important agency 
in deciding what families to aid, and how much and what kind of 
relief to give.” Jour. Social Science No. XII, p. 106 (December, 1880). 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 45 


were forbidden. And, instead, every citizen was made 
to contribute to this new organization. These contribu- 
tions were collected monthly by the citizens in turn... . 
In 1801, the number of supervisors was increased to 
twelve; and it was decided to separate the function of 
jistrict visitation from that of supervision. The city was 
jivided into eight precincts, and each precinct into four 
districts. One of the twelve supervisors was put over 
zach precinct, and an overseer over each district. The 
‘verseers had to investigate and report; but they had 
‘no control over the final disposition of cases, which was 
‘made by the board of supervisors, under the Burgomas- 
ter as president.” 1 

- It is apparent from the records of this organization that 
they had become acquainted with the Hamburg experi- 
‘ment already discussed in this study? 

. Although this system remained unchanged until 1853, 
‘its administration, it would seem, was neither wise nor 
afficient. Its fundamental principle had been tested by 
‘experience. Its application suffered in this instance from 





insufficient membership to carry it out. In 1853 a re- 
organization of the system was effected, largely under 
the leadership of Daniel von der Heydt.* It was not an 
abandonment of the former policy but rather a more 
‘satisfactory application of the original ideas underlying 
the experiment of 1801. The machinery of administra- 
| tion was simplified, thus obviating much harmful friction 
| and discord. The city was districted. A citizen visitor 








| *See Joseph Henry Crooker, “Problems in American Society,” pp. 100, 
IOI. 

| *Joseph Henry Crooker in his “Problems in American Society” records 
the fact that when they considered the question how they could most 
zasily obtain adequate information in regard to the entire management 
,0f paupers, they were astonished to find in the Hamburg records a 
,cireular of instruction which they made their own with a few unim- 
| portant changes. 

| *It was by Daniel von der Heydt, David Peters and Gustav Schliefer 
,by whom this reorganization “was thought out and carried through 
to success.” ‘The Elberfeld Semi-Centennial,” Charities, Vol. XI, p. 460 
: (1903). It is of interest to note in passing that von der Heydt had been 
— by Chalmer’s work in Glasgow. 


| 


46 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


or Armenpfleger was placed in charge of each district. 
Appointed for a period of compulsory service the Armen. 
pfleger became the responsible person upon whose servy- 
ices the municipality could count. The new regulations 
provided that each visitor should have charge of not 
over four needy families. The city was redistricted 
whenever the number of poor in any district increased 
or decreased to any considerable extent.. The visitors, 
chosen from all walks of life, received. applications 
for aid directly from those needing help. They were 
required to visit each poor family and thereafter to 
inquire into its circumstances at least once in every 
two weeks. The law fixed a minimum amount for relief, 
and any income received by the family from any source 
was deducted from such minimum. The Armenpfleger 
also acted as a “friendly visitor,” in so far as he assisted 
by advice, by the finding of employment, or by the pro- 
vision of medical aid, any person or family whose circum- 
stances would seem to indicate the possibility of future 
dependence. 

Conferences of groups of these citizen visitors were 
held for mutual consultation and education. Supervision 
for the purpose of standardization was secured by re- 
quiring the Armenpfleger of a group of districts to report 
at regular fortnightly meetings to an overseer. The 
decisions of these meetings were reviewed immediately by 
a central committee. Thus while the relief of the poor 
in their homes was decided and administered by the 
Armenpfleger i in their joint meeting, it was always subi 
to supervision and review. 

There is thus a distinct difference between the Armenr- 
pfleger and the friendly visitor of the charity organiza- 
tion society. The ‘““Armenpfleger” is essentially a public 
official or a ‘“‘volunteer official.” ‘‘He comes as a friend, 
a neighbor and a fellow citizen, concerned to get” a neces- 
sitous family ‘‘over their trouble in the best possible way. 
But on his other side, the voluntary helper is the agent 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 47 


yf the public authority, registering his cases in the official 
‘ecords, reporting what he has seen, carrying out in his 
ninistrations the official instructions which he has re- 
‘eived, procuring admission for his families to the sev- 
al public institutions, dispensing as outdoor relief the 
‘unds provided by the local authority out of rates and 
axes, and acting throughout under the constant super- 
fision and direction of the expert municipal officials in 
‘ach department.” + It should be noted that unlike the 
rolunteer or friendly visitor of the charity organiza- 
ion society, when the Armenpfleger enters a home to 
nake inquiries, he is armed with authority as well as 
vith the power of sympathy. Among other differences 
s the geographical assignment of families, a system 
hat did not take root in the United States. 

_ The new plan met with phenomenal success. In 1852, 
he year before von der Heydt’s plan was formed, the 
‘ity, with a population of fifty thousand, had four thou- 
sand paupers. In 1869 the population was seventy-one 
housand and the paupers one thousand and sixty-two, 
while the expense had dwindled one-half.? The introduc- 
jon of the system reduced the cost of relief from 178,645 
0 90,083 marks, or 1.78 marks per head. In 1885-6 the 
30st was 159,750 marks for a population of 106,700 or 
(.50 marks per head.? By 1904 the population had in- 
sreased to one hundred and sixty-two thousand, and the 
yroportion of the population in receipt of temporary or 
yermanent relief had diminished by over forty per cent 
ince the introduction of the system; that is from 8 to 


| *Sidney Webb, “The Extension Ladder Theory of the Relation be- 
ween Voluntary Philanthropy and State or Municipal Action,” The 
iurvey, March 7, 1914, p. 706. 

7D. O. Kellogg, “The Pauper Question,” see Repts. and Papers, 
gue. Of N. Y., No. 17, p. 13 (July, 1883). 

_ Although it is not clear whether the term pauper is used in a technical 
ense of meaning one dependent upon the public purse, the decrease 
\s shown by the figures quoted is significant. 

—*C. S. Loch, “Report on Elberfeld System,” p. 66. 


48 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


4.7 per cent. The per capita cost had also diminished 
It is therefore fair to say that within a short time de 
pendence on public funds in part or in full for suppor 
in Elberfeld was reduced to very narrow limits. 

The important characteristics of the system whic! 
achieved these results and which became with variation 
in detail, the standard method of poor relief in German: 
are: First and foremost, individualization in the care o 
the poor. The subdivision of the field of work is carrie 
so far that each overseer has a small enough number o 
cases to make relatively efficient individual work possible 
Second, emphasis on cure rather than palliation. Third 
in matters of technique, verification of facts, writte! 
records and comparative statistics are accepted as indis 
pensable. The fourth characteristic, perhaps the mos 
striking, at least to Americans, is the principle of civi 
obligation.? , 

On the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of th 
Elberfeld system it was recorded: ‘The duties 0 
the citizen of Elberfeld as a visitor are consideret 
the highest honors. To-day every citizen of Elber 
feld is gladly ready to take this responsibility, and i 
he once takes it, he finds in it every satisfaction, am 
remains faithful.” Considerable prestige attaches t 
the office of Armenpfleger, which is considered the firs 
round on the ladder of municipal honor offices. Th 
‘honor board’ of Armenpfleger at the time of the semi 
centennial contained one hundred and ten names of citi 
zens of all positions who had been twenty-five years ani 
upward in the service of the poor law administration 
This situation in which both law and custom impos 


*“The really distinctive feature of the Elberfeld system and the on 
to which its excellence is due, however,” writes Sidney Webb, “is no 
this obligation of service, which is seldom enforced, but the organi 
relationship in which the voluntary helper stands with regard to th 
public authority.” Sidney Webb, “The Extension Ladder Theory 90 
the Relationship between Voluntary Philanthropy and State or Mu 
nicipal Action,” The Survey, March 7, 1914, p. 706. 

*“The Elberfeld Semi-Centennial,” Charities, Vol. XI, p. 460 (1903) 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 49 


© great duties on the great mass of the citizens is 
Itogether unparalleled in England and America.1 This 
foes not mean that the Elberfeld experience has been 


yithout influence either in England or America.” 
: 


ENGLISH PIONEERS OF PHILANTHROPY 

_A review of the foreign antecedents of the charity 
ganization movement in the United States carries one 
inally to England, the home of the first society for or- 
sanizing charity in the world. The methods of this so- 
siety launched in London in 1869 embody not only much 
yf the experience and many of the practices already dis- 
tussed in this chapter, but also much native wisdom 
tained by a first hand contact with the problem of pov- 
ty extending back a half century and over. 

_ As early as 1796 Thomas Bernard,® assisted by the 


*For this among other reasons Charles S. Loch in a study of the 
tlberfeld system concludes that such a system would be more successful 
n Germany than in England though he admits that “in towns which 
‘ontain a stationary industrial population, in which there is no great 
everance of the rich and poor, and where there is a good burgher spirit, 
t might succeed, though probably rather as a communal administration 
4f voluntary relief and endowments than as an outdoor relief system.” 
Yertainly there is reasonable ground for doubt as to whether a system of 
‘ompulsory visiting of the poor such as the Elberfeld system contem- 
jlates, and which is indigenous to the bureaucratic soil of Germany would 
ucceed equally well after transplanting to America with its heterogeneous 
‘roups in every large center of population and its traditions against all 
hat savors of bureaucracy. C. S. Loch, “Report on Elberfeld System.” 

*C. S. Loch, “Charity and Social Life,” p. 34s. 

Robert M. Hartley, the father of the Association for Improving the 
Sondition of the Poor Movement of the 1840’s seems to have received 
nore of his ideas from Germany than England. 

_ Charles G. Ames, who introduced the first charity organization so- 
lety into America (see pp. 175-177), “was influenced by the Elberfeld 
ystem of ‘organizing charity’ for Germantown during the winter of 
872.” From a letter from (Mrs. Charles G.) Fanny B. Ames to 
he author under date of August 23, 1914. 

“Sir Thomas Bernard was born of a good family and educated in 
New Jersey, before and at the time of the War of Independence; he 
eturned to England when scarcely more than a boy; gave himself to 
trenuous study of the law... .” He was successful and retired and 
efore he was fifty selected philanthropy as a profession. ‘Says B. 


50 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


Bishop of Durham, M. Eliot, William Wilberforce and 
\ others, founded in London, “The Society for Bettering 
Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor.” 
Its objects were “to make inquiry into all that concerns 
the poor, and the promotion of their happiness a 
science.”’! Thomas Bernard, the moving spirit of the 
society believed that one’s duty to the poor is a personal 
service. He considered that the poor had never had a 
fair trial, that experiments had been made for their 
advantage which had not been explained to them and 
of which they had been not unnaturally jealous, and that 
the best means to counteract the idleness and drunken- 
ness of which they were so widely accused was to provide 
them with better food and better lodging? He was 
especially interested in Count Rumford’s cooking stoves, 
and in the question of cheap associated housekeeping. 
Meantime, in a scientific spirit, the new society proposed 
to collect information concerning the charitable efforts 
already in existence and to see how they could be im: 
proved and extended. 

In 1805 another step toward scientific charity was 
-taken in England when the London Mendicancy Society 
was organized. The new organization “was not formed 
for the purpose of collecting money to be distributed 
indiscriminately to any applicants, whom subscribers, 
anxious to be rid of importunity, might send to the office; 
but for the purpose of suppressing that swarm of auda- 
cious imposters which had formerly made this city 
(London) the subject of a contemptuous proverb: and 
for the further purpose of assisting those who should be 





Kirkman Gray of him: “To him we owe the attempt to take stock of 
philanthropy; and if large acquaintance with its working be a qualifi- 
cation he possessed it, for none is before him in the promotion of 
works of charity. Others had collected information—he did so as 
part of his philosophical aim.” B. Kirkman Gray, “A History of 
English Philanthropy,” p. 278 (1905). 

*From the “Preliminary Address to the Public.” , 

7M. E. Jersey, “Charity a Hundred Years Ago.” The Nineteenth 
Century, Vol. 57, p. 656 (1905). : 





FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 51 


jJesirous of affording aid to real distress.” 1 This latter 
‘he society proposed doing by offering the time and labor 
of the members of the committee to the public to explore 
‘the retreats of the humble, the inobtrusive, the friend- 
ess, the helpless and the hopeless” * and to conduct such 
vestigations as occasion in each case demanded. It is 


nteresting to note that while the society recognized the ~ 


fact that “the codperation of the benevolent, both in the 
abor of investigating and in relieving the distresses of 
he indigent, is at all times desirable’ * and to this end 
sought the increase in its numbers, it nevertheless recog- 
aized the fact that “the various occupations and engage- 
ments of most persons prevent them from engaging in 
such inquiry, and system and habit can alone induce 
sorrectness in this as in other exertions.”* While thus 
standing for a more or less professional attitude toward 
the relief of distress, the society at the same time declared 
‘hat although it was willing to become the almoner of 
thers, it was “not anxious to become the sole distributor 
‘@mcharity.”* | 
! In 1813 a similar society was established in Edin- 
ourgh, with sub-committees for investigation, for employ- 
nent, for education, and for the supply of food. The 
Edinburgh Society for the Suppression of Mendicity, as it 
was called, so successfully operated a self-sustaining sav- 
ngs bank that, in 1817, Parliament took under govern- 
nent regulation the rapidly multiplying savings banks 
bi the United Kingdom. The society’s third annual re- 
ort, wrote Mr. C. S. Loch almost a century later, con- 





tains passages “that might almost occur in the annual 
| a of any society of the present day.” ® 
No account of the contributions of the English pio- 


| *John Duncan, “Collections on Charity,” pp. 185, 186 (1815). 
| *Ibid., p. 186. 
*Tbid., p. 186. 
*Tbid., p. 186. 
*Ibid., p. 186. 
“Charities, Vol. IX, p. 132 (1902). 





52 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


neers of the earlier years of the century is complet: 
without reference to William Allen and Elizabeth Fry 
Encouraged by the Society of Friends, these two earl; 
\took up the struggle for better methods of dealing witl 
the pauper and criminal classes. Their work among th 
convicts of Newgate, their attempts to relieve by nationa 
legislation the distress bequeathed the English people by 
the wars with Napoleon, and their organization of socie 
ties for the systematic visiting of the poor constitute not 
able beginnings in a wiser handling of the problems o 
crime and poverty. 

In 1843 there was founded in London The Metropolita1 
Visiting and Relief Association. Its funds were dis 
tributed entirely through the local clergy and their dis 
trict visitors. Beside this society and The Strangers 
Friend Society, founded in 1785 as a relief society pri 
marily for the benefit of those not entitled to parochia 
relief, there were in London a number of smaller relie 
societies confining their operations to certain districts i 
the Metropolis, and which antedated the founding of th 
London Society for Organizing Charity. 

In 1844 a movement for improving housing condition 
was launched in London with the organization of the Se 
ciety for Improving the Condition of the Laborin 
Classes, of which Lord Shaftesbury was chairman. | 
1856 Miss Burdett-Coutts was building in Bethnal Green 
in 1862 Mr. Peabody established a fund of £150,000 i 
trust for the same purpose; while in 1864 Miss Octavi 
Hill, whose influence on the charity organization move 
ment on both sides of the Atlantic is marked, began he 
work.’ By 1868 the interest in housing had reached suc 
proportions that there were at least eight association 
interested in this much needed reform. 













* Bosanquet, Helen, “Social Work in London,” p. 16 (1914). See als 
“Life of Octavia Hill,” as told in her Letters, edited by C. Edmun 
Maurice (1913). 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS ne 


THE LONDON CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY 


The first charity organization society in the world was 
launched in London, England, the 22d day of April, 
1869. i 

The immediate cause of this new attempt to deal wit 
the age-old problem of pauperism and poverty was the. 
East End distress in London of the latter sixties, due in 
part to the industrial effect in England of the American 
Civil War. By 1869 certain boards of guardians were 
sitting under police protection, besieged by threatening 
crowds of the poor and distressed. The poor rates were 
going up by leaps and bounds. In the city of London, 
between the years 1860 and 1869, the number of persons 
annually supported or assisted by official charity alone, 
‘increased from 85,000 to 120,000; and the annual official 
‘expenditure increased proportionately from four millions 
to seven millions of dollars! * In addition vast sums of 
private benevolence were being spent to little purpose. 
Instead of wisdom and caution in the field of voluntary 
enterprise, there was prodigality, disregard of economic 
laws, impotency and confusion. An age in which the two 
richest nations of the world were doubling their accumu- 


*For a detailed account of many preliminary steps taken between 
‘June 22, 1868, when the Reverend Henry Solly, a Unitarian minister, 
read a paper entitled, “How to Deal with the Unemployed Poor of 
London, and with its ‘Roughs’ and Criminal Classes” before the 
‘Society of Arts which resulted in the formation of the Charity Or- 
-ganization Society; and April 22, 1869, see Helen Bosanquet, “Social 
Work in London,” pp. 17-27; H. Holman writes in the Charity Or- 
‘ganization Review, new series, Vol. XXXII, p. 23 (1912) under the 
caption, “First Principles of Charity Organization,’ “The C. O. S. was 
brought into being in 1869, by a desire to prevent crime, through training 
‘and finding employment for those likely to become criminals—‘the desti- 
tute and truant poor.’ This idea was quickly modified into ‘the preven- 
‘tion of pauperism and crime’—which recognizes the chief cause of disease. 
The idea of the method of prevention was enlarged so as to include 
‘the codperation of existing charitable agencies, official and private.’” 
. (See W. M. Wilkinson’s ‘History of the Origin of the C. O. S.’) 

*S. H. Gurteen, “Handbook of Charity Organization,” p. 23 (1882). 


‘ 





54 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 





lating wealth every twenty years had become lavish of 
alms, and in this soil had sprung up ‘‘a race of charity- 
mongers with canvassing books, most of whom were free 
to apply their easily-gotten subscriptions according to 
their own judgment or caprice.” 1 To make the picture 
of the charitable situation more dark it was the belief in 
many quarters that even the administration of the emer- 
gency funds raised in London for the relief of the Lan- 
cashire weavers had miscarried. Every one was agreed 
that immediate action was necessary.2 The result was 
the launching of “The London Society for Organizing 
Charitable Relief and Repressing Mendicancy” (popu- 
larly known as the Charity Organization Society), already 
referred to. 

The more remote causes of the new movement lay in 
the English system of poor relief. The Poor-Law Amend- 
ment Act or reform of 1834 required among other things 
that the local administrators of the law erect a work- 
house or work-houses for their respective districts or poor- 
law unions. The ‘work-house test” was reéstablished by 
directing that no relief should be given to able-bodied 
persons, emphasis being laid upon the principle “that the 

-condition of the pauper ought to be, on the whole,-less 
eligible than that of the independent laborer.” * “The 
framers of the poor law of 1834 never seriously consid- 
ered how they could find work for the destitute. They 
only wanted a disagreeable and deterrent occupation. 
Their principle was to offer board and lodging in the 
work-house to all who would take it; the only further 
consideration being how to make the recipient’s condition 
so uncomfortable that he would avoid it as long as he 
could, and get out of it on the first opportunity.” * Pos- 





*D. O. Kellogg, “The Function of Charity Organization,” Lend-2- 
Hand, Vol. I, p. 451 (1886). 

*See H. Holman, “First Principles of Charity Organization,” Charity 
Organization Review, new series, Vol. XXXII, p. 24 (1912). 

*“Tetters and other Writings of Edward Denison,” edited by Sir 
Baldwyn Leighton, pp. 114, 115 (1872). 

Ibid. 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 55 


sibly it was felt in some quarters that “this system, thor- 
oughly and universally enforced by able administrators, 
would have stamped out pauperism altogether, to the 
infinite advantage of the whole laboring class.” ! But the 
law never was in harmony with public opinion; it was 
very partially and negligently executed and broke down.” 
Some of the effects of the breakdown have already been 
noted in the statistics quoted above of the unprecedented 
increase in the numbers in London receiving public assist- 
ance. 

The relative success of the charity organization move- 
ment in England in face of great odds cannot be under- 
stood unless one appreciates the rdle played by the an- 
cient universities of England in the social thought of last 
century. In no part of England did the problem of pov- 
erty attract greater attention or receive fuller discussion 
than at the two great Universities of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge and at the University of London. They were 
among the first of the more prominent centers of thought 
to grasp the important bearings of the questions involved. 
By the 50’s knowledge of the social misery in London 
had been brought to these seats of learning and had 
awakened their conscience. Three men of the church 
often heard at Oxford were Charles Kingsley, Frederick 
Denison Maurice and Frederick William Robertson, a 
younger man and less well known, but a profound 
student. By the end of the decade graduates who 
came from the University to London frequently placed 
their free time at the disposal of Workingmen’s Col- 
lege, which had been founded in London in 1854 by 
Maurice. Social reform and kindred subjects were in 
the air in class-room and on the campus. Statesmen, 
clergymen, philanthropists and educators studied the 
problem from their respective standpoints. The influence 
of the Universities in the social awakening is to be appre- 


*“Tetters and other Writings of Edward Denison,” edited by Sir 
Baldwyn Leighton, pp. 114, 115 (1872). 
iam bid. 


56 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


ciated in part at the mention of the names John Ruskin, 
Dr. Thomas Arnold, and Professor T. H. Green at Ox- 
ford and of Dr. Whewall, one of the most profound think- 
ers of his time, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
As a result of the influence of these noted thinkers, Oxford 
and Cambridge enthusiasts, who had been anxiously 
awaiting a practical solution of the great social problems 
of the day would, on leaving the University, settle among 
the poor. The all-too-brief career of Edward Denison, an 
Oxford man, son of a bishop of the Church of England, 
is but one illustration of many that might be cited of 
young University men who, at that time, gave themselves 
as well as their money to the work of practical social 
reform. 

The new society was fortunate in the calibre of many 
of the men and women who formed its personnel. These 
included, among others, the then Earl of Shaftesbury, 
the then Duke of Norfolk, Sir Charles E. Trevelyan, 
Charles Bosanquet, the then Lord Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, the then Archbishop of Westminster, the then Lord 
Bishop of London, Alsagar Hay Hill (brother of Miss 
Octavia Hill), John Ruskin, Cardinal Newman and Wil- 
liam E. Gladstone.t ‘Among its most active members 
were some of the leading physicians of England. These 
gentlemen had come to the conclusion that a dispensary 
or hospital conducted on the traditional system of indis- 
criminate gratuitous relief, could only become, to hun- 
dreds of thousands of honest people, a vast school of pau- 
perism—demoralizing the honest poor, educating them 
in improvident and mendicant habits, and teaching them, 
in one most vital department of life, to be thriftless and 
dependent.” One of the greatest assets of the new 
society seems to have been its great influential and vig- 

*Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 
series 5, number 8, Appendix, pp. 322 and 323. Cardinal Newman and 
William E. Gladstone are mentioned as among those who “took hold of 


the work of building up the society.” 
*S. H. Gurteen, “Handbook of Charity Organization,” p. 99 (1882). 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 57 


‘orous executive council, with Lord Lichfield at its 
head.’ 

If the new movement was fortunate in the personnel 
of its founders, it was even more fortunate in the fund 
of information and experience upon which it could draw.’ 
In addition to the common fund of knowledge already dis- 
‘cussed, especially the work of Chalmers, it had a living 
touch with the work of Octavia Hill and a vital contact 
with the wealth of experience of Edward Denison. Miss 
Hill’s interest in the poor of London was well known at 
the time. Knowledge of her experiments in improving the 
housing conditions of the poor was attracting attention 
far and wide.? The very year of the founding of the 
‘new society she read a paper before the Social Science 
Association of London on the “Importance of aiding thef 
poor without alms-giving,” in which she expressed a, 
firm belief in personal and sympathetic intercourse with; 
the poor’ in small local effort in working with the poor 
rather than great centralized schemes, and a desire that 
the giving of money dissociated from real sympathy be 
checked by the reformers of charity. Through her writ- 
ings and service in both district work and on the Cen- 
tral Council of the Charity Organization Society, she had 
a marked influence by her wise counselling during the for- 
mative years of the new society. ‘‘Let us never,” she 
maintained in reason and out, “weakly plead that what 


’S. Humphreys Gurteen, “Beginnings of Charity Organization in 
America,” Lend-a-Hand, Vol. XIII, p. 354 (1894). 

*It is not without interest to students of the American movement 
to record that the year that witnessed the launching of the London 
C. O. S. also marked the completion of the Boston Charity Building, 
and that the London society gave “handsome recognition of what had 
been accomplished at the head of Massachusetts Bay.” D. O. Kellogg, ‘“‘The 
Function of Charity Organization,” Lend-a-Hand, Vol. I, p. 450 (1886). 

*It was Mr. Ruskin who enabled Octavia Hill to carry into effect 
her plan for the elevation of the poor through purchasing condemned 
houses and, after making them sanitary, renting them to the poor. “He 
at once came forward,” she writes, “with all the money necessary and 
took the whole risk of the undertaking upon himself. He showed me, 
however, that it would be far more useful if it could be made to pay; 
that a working-man ought to be able to pay for his own house.” See 
“Homes of the London Poor,” Reprint No. 8 of the N. Y. State Chari- 
ties Aid Association (1875), p. 6. 


58 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


we do is penev ere we must ascertain that it is Teall 
beneficent too.” 

Although Edward Denison had little to do with the for- 
mal organization of the Charity Organization Society, no 
one had more to do with shaping its ideals. He, with Sir 
Charles Trevelyan, contributed a larger experience and a 
clearer conception of what was needed in the organizing 
of the society than probably any other man of the time. 
Denison first came into direct contact with the poor of 
London as an almoner of the Society for the Relief of 
Distress. While a visitor for this society he wrote to a 
friend that he saw how perfectly useless were doles of 
bread and meat.? ‘All the men,” he wrote a little later, 
“who really give themselves most trouble about the poor 
are the most alive to the terrible evils of the so-called 
charity which pours money into the haunts of misery and 
vice every winter.” * Perceiving the unsatisfactory re- 
sults of giving relief by doles, he determined to attempt 
some more thorough and drastic treatment. It was at this 
time (1867) that he took up his residence among the 
poor of Stepney district, one of those great London 
wastes of humanity of that day, that he might familiarize 
himself with its ways of life and habits of thought. He 
soon began the work of developing night classes, schools, 
workingmen’s institutes and sanitary reforms. His work 
in Stepney district and his knowledge of the experience 
of Octavia Hill in her work with her poor tenants soon 
led him to see the dangers of material gifts to the dis- 
tressed from any source. Denison’s philosophy was es- 
sentially that of self-help. ‘No man,” he wrote, ‘may 
deliver his brother, he can but throw him a plank.” ? 
This plank, as he used the term, was the “alms of good 


*M. E. Richmond, “What is Charity Organization?” Charities Re- 
view, Vol. IX, p. 492 (1900). 

*See “Letters and other writings of Edward Denison,” edited by Sir 
Baldwyn Leighton, pp. 20, 21 (1872). 

* Ibid., pp. 58, 59. 

* Ibid., PD. 45. 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 59 


advice” of which Sylvain Bailly had spoken in counseling 
Ozanam and his fellows. ‘How many thousands of pau- 
pers,” writes Denison elsewhere, “have lived and died, 
and been buried at public expense, whom a little friendly 
advice, a little search for friends or relations, some pains 
taken to find proper work, when the first application to 
the board (of Poor-Law guardians) was made, would have 
lifted out of the mire and set on the rock of honest in- 
dustry.” 1 Above all, Denison believed that certain defi- 


nite social reforms were necessary before much headway . 


could be made against the rising tide of poverty. In 
1866 he had written when still a visitor for the Society 
for the Relief of Distress, “the chief use of this Society 
and of many others in my view consists in bringing a 
considerable number of persons belonging to the upper 
classes in actual contact with the misery of their fellow 
citizens and so convincing them of the necessity of social 
reform.” ? His social reforms included a radical change 
from the prevailing Lady Bountiful type of charity with 
its doles to the poor; a revolution in the administration 
of the Poor Law; Housing and Sanitary Reforms and a 
wide diffusion of education among the masses. Deni- 
son’s untimely death occurred in 1870, when the new so- 
ciety was still less than a year old. 

The new society began without funds and without 
District Committees but with ‘‘a clear idea of what it 
hoped to achieve.” ? Its plans included beside the or- 
ganization of a Central Committee, the establishment of 
District Committees in all parts of London to organize 
the vast chaos of charitable administration and relief 
in their respective districts. The relief to be organized 
was not only of large and well established relief societies 

*M. E. Richmond, “What is Charity Organization?” Charities Re- 
view, Vol. IX, p. 498 (1900). 

See “Letters and other writings of Edward Denison,” edited by Sir 
Baldwyn Leighton, Pp. 21 (1872). 


*“The C. O. S. in its Infancy,” The Charity Organization Review, 
new series, Vol. 33, p. 183 (1913). 


pa 


60 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


such as the Society for the Relief of Distress, The 
Metropolitan Visiting and Relief Society and _ the 
Strangers’ Friend, but also the relief of some very ex- 
tensive but still local organizations for relief such as 
the South London Refuge and Mission, and the East 
End Relief and Mission Fund. In brief, the District 
Committees were to serve as clearing houses for the char- 
ity of their respective jurisdictions. In the main, the or- 
ganizing of relief for the vast amount of distress which 
did not come under the direct action of the Poor-Law 
officials was to be the chief concern of the Committees, 
but it was proposed that the Committees should also be 
in communication with the Poor-Law officials in order that 
the overlapping of relief should be avoided wherever pos- 
sible, for it was evident closer codperation between the 
public authorities and the private chanics had become 
indispensable. 

The new society clearly conceived its purpose to be “‘to 
give a definite aim to and to direct into the most effective 
channels the large amount of benevolent force at work 
in England and particularly in London.” Its object was 
the organization of relief rather than its creation. It 
based its justification for being on its opportunity of 
promoting the real efficiency of all other societies. It 
was to be a rival of none. 

“The new organization believed as earnestly as Deni- 
son did in developing all possible substitutes for relief, 
but it found another and more immediately pressing task 
thrust upon it. Substitutes for relief could gain no foot- 
hold so long as relief itself in larger quantities continued 
to be poured out, without plan or purpose or inter-com- 
munication, by agencies both religious and secular, both 
public and private.” 


*The members of the Society for Relief of Distress, “the true pioneers 
of the movement,” heartily codperated with the new society. See foot- 
note p. vii, “Letters and other Writings of Edward Denison,” edited 
by Sir Baldwyn Leighton (1872). 

7M. E. Richmond, “What is Charity Organization?” Charities Re- 
view, Pp. 492 (1900). 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 61 


It seems fair to say that the charity organization move- 
ment came as a protest to the grave abuses of charitable 
relief then obtaining. Viewed as a needed reform, 
it came as part of the gradual reaction against the 
failure of the Poor-Law reform of 1834 rather than 
as a distinct and radical departure from the previous 
methods of handling the problem of poverty. “It 
‘arose primarily,” writes Dr. Peixotto, “to point out the 
‘futility of the numberless casual private societies which 
‘the boundless fertility of the philanthropic imagination 
had, especially during the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- 
turies, brought into existence.” 

_ In time the movement became more and more the out- 
ward expression of a new school of charitable thought 
and endeavor founded by Denison and his friends. They 
‘visualized a philanthropy controlled by citizens ‘acting 
‘with more ‘heart’—for which read patience, insight, initia- 
‘tive—than the government, and more circumspection than 
private societies or individuals have traditionally been 
wont to show.’ It must ever be borne in mind in inter- 
preting the London pioneers in charity organization that 
the Manchester School of Political Economy, which main- 
tained that nothing should be done for the poor that 
would tend to make their lot ‘“‘better than the poorest 
independent laborer,” swayed the minds of the English 
‘intellectuals. It permeated the philosophy of Denison’s 
generation. The doctrine of laissez-faire was widely 
recognized as a most important economic principle. ‘“Suc- 
cess denoted strength, fitness, righteousness. The indi- 
‘vidual causes of distress and poverty were emphasized 
and discussed.” * These facts should be recalled, as every 
‘institution reflects the conditions of its birth and the 
\ oe Jessica B. Peixotto, “Reconciling Public and Private Relief.’ The 
Second Annual Report of the Municipal Charities Commission, City 
of Los Angeles, Cal., p. 28 (1915). 

*Ibid., p. 28. 

*Robert Hunter, “The Relation between Social Settlements and 


» Charity Organization,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. XI, p. 75 


(1902). 





62 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


atmosphere in which it develops. They affected the Lon- 
don Society in its formative years. These facts are not 
here recited as a criticism of those who launched the 
charity organization movement, which was assuredly in 
many ways a step in advance beyond what mankind had 
previously taken, but rather as an aid in grasping the 
significance of the change that has come about in the 
social thinking of leaders in the movement during the 
past forty years. 

Of all the antecedents of the charity organization 
movement in the United States, none has had a greater 
influence than the work of these pioneers of England just 
reviewed. The first charity organization society to cover 
a large American city (Buffalo) was transplanted direct 
from England.1 But of even greater importance was the 
influence of the work and writings of Edward Denison 
and Octavia Hill, from whom the spirit of the work in 
America, especially Boston and New York, received great 
impetus. 

Did space permit, it would be interesting to trace the 
evolution of the charity organization movement in Eng- 
land since the pioneer days just described, but as inviting 
as the excursion would be, it would take us too far afield.” 


*“The gradual unfolding of the charity organization scheme as it 
became developed in practice,’ writes S. H. Gurteen, one of the group 
of Oxford students referred to before in the text and later founder 
of the Buffalo Charity Organization Society, “was watched by many 
a University graduate with the keenest interest, and not a few became 
active members of committees or in other ways lent their aid to insure 
the success of the scheme.” It was in this way, by actual voluntary 
participation in the work, and through the training of the district 
office, and district committee room that “the ‘University Slummers,’ 
as they were called (and I am proud to have been one of them), came 
to appreciate both the theoretical perfection of the underlying aim, 
idea or scope of the society, and the practical wisdom of its methods.” 
S. H. Gurteen, “Beginning of Charity Organization in America,” Lend-a- 
Hand, Vol. XIII, p. 355 (1894). 

*The subsequent development of the movements in the two countries 
presents some interesting contrasts. The English movement has been based 
in the main on the Manchesterian School of Economics with its emphasis 
—modern emphasis—on Jaissez-faire. In America, on the other hand, 
the emphasis has been on an increase in government activity or at 
least social control through legislation. The American viewpoint has 


FOREIGN ANTECEDENTS 63 


‘been increasingly social which, in recent times, has been finding an 
‘outlet in legislation. An example of this is the tenement house leg- 
jjslation in New York, in the main the result of efforts of Charity 
Organizationists. In England the general social conditions to be faced 
‘have differed fundamentally from those in America. In the first place, 
the composition of the group that the charity organization societies 
of the two countries have had to deal with present important dif- 
ferences. The English societies have accepted the presence of an heredi- 
‘tarily poor class, a class that is static. In America there is too much 
hope and progressiveness in the atmosphere even of the poor, for 
‘such a static condition to endure. The American poor are a dynamic 
group, nor is the immigrant often found in the pauper class. The 
universal testimony is that they rise in the social and economic scale 
with great rapidity. Even among those in America, either native or 
immigrant, who are forced over the poverty line, one seldom finds 
the same name long remaining on the records of the charity organiza- 
tion society. A further fundamental difference exists in the matter of 
giving relief. The English societies are largely relief agencies, while in 
‘America the tendency has been to remain societies for organizing charity. 
4 Perhaps the chief difference between the London and American attitude 
jis that in London they “consider the situation of many families or 
jpersons as not helpable through charitable means.” they therefore 
irefer them to the Poor Law which through the workhouse, boarding 
‘of children, etc., can supply relief and a new environment. London, 
however, is changing and adopting the American standards in this matter. 
| For a history of the London Charity Organization Society, see Helen 
‘Bosanquet, “Social Work in London,” 1869-1912: “A History of the 
Charity Organization Society” (1914). 








CHAPTER III 


ANTECEDENTS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE 
UNITED STATES 


IF it is true to-day that the more enlightened care of 
the needy and the prevention of ills are not matters 
which as yet press heavily upon the personal comfort 
and interest of most men, one can readily understand why 
in 1776 and for long thereafter in a country with an 
abundance of free land and with conditions of life com- 
paratively simple, there was no need of societies for 
organizing charity. Communities were so small as to 
allow men to be neighbors. To see that the destitute 
did not suffer for shelter, food and fuel, to watch with 
the ill, was natural and neighborly. The ‘“‘invisible relief 
fund” of Chalmers was available in every community. 
As each occasion arose, the resources of the neighbor- 
hood were organized to meet the need,—as is still done 
in rural communities to-day,—successfully often, but fail- 
ing when the problem requires expert knowledge. As 
Warner has pointed out, our resources seemed to be in- 
exhaustible. “Least of all, was it imagined that we need 
give serious attention to the matter of poor-relief. It 
was assumed that we were quarantined against poverty 
and distress by our glorious Constitution and Declaration 
of Independence.”? 

This does not mean that there was a complete absence: 
of either private or public charitable agencies.2 There 

* Amos G. Warner, “American Charities,” revised edition, p. 18 (1908). 

* At the beginning of the nineteenth century almshouses were to be 
found in the larger cities of New York, Boston and Philadelphia, while 


the older states of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina, Penn- 
sylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island had each of them, apparently, 2 


64 


ANTECEDENTS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 65 


were sporadic private agencies existing from very early 
days. These usually restricted their activities to a 
narrow field as a particular nationality or class of needs. 
One of the earliest of the former ,recorded is the Scots 

Charitable Society in Boston, organized i in 1657. } 

“Perhaps the earliest Protestant church charity which 
became permanent is the Boston ‘Quarterly Charity Lec- 
ture,’ founded in 1720 by 2 few persons, who held 
quarterly meetings on Sunday evenings for benevolent 
purposes, at which some member was invited to preach.’ 
On March 6, 1720, Cotton Mather gave the first of these 
lectures of which there is record. The meeting is now 
held annually. The collections made at this lecture and 
the income from two endowed funds, yielding from 
$1,500 to $1,800 annually, are distributed equally to four 
Congregational churches, who dispense them according to 
the prevailing custom of the charitable organization of 
each church.’ 

Besides the Scotch society, there gradually came into 
existence a number of like societies for other nationalities. 
Most of them continue to exist to the present aay. 
Among the earlier ones to be organized were the St. 
Andrew’s Society of New York in 1756; the German 
Society of New York in 1784; the St. Andrew’s Society 
of Baltimore in 1806; the French Benevolent Society of 
New York in 1809; and ae German Society of Baltimore 
in 1817.° 

Of the type of society existing in the eighteenth cen- 
well developed system of county almshouses. The above named cities 
‘were the first to have almshouses. The one in Philadelphia was com- 
pleted in 1731, while the one in Boston was opened almost seventy 
years earlier. See Robert W. Hebberd, “Institutional Care of Destitute 
Adults,” Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 515. 

*Chapter on “Charities of Boston, ” by George Silsbee Hale, in ‘“Me- 
‘morial History of Boston,” p. 660 ay 

7E. T. Devine, “Principles of Relief,” p. 325 (1905). 

*Other prominent societies of this cae formed after those named 
‘n the text but antedating the first charity organization society 
include: the German Society in Boston (1847); Illinois St. Andrew 


Society, incorporated in 1853; and the French Benevolent Society 
af Baltimore, organized in 1854. 





66 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


tury based on meeting a special need, the four following 
are illustrative: The Philadelphia Society for alleviating 
the miseries of public prisoners formed in 1787; the 
Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society (incorporated in 
1794, “for the purpose of relieving such as suffer by 
fire, and of stimulating genius to useful discoveries, tend- 
ing to secure the lives and property of their fellow men 
from destruction by that element”); The New York 
Dispensary, organized in 1791, for the care of the sick 
poor of the city, and in the same city The Society for the 
Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children, founded in 
1798. This last type of philanthropic organization con- 
tinued to multiply during the first quarter of the next 
century’ They have never ceased coming into existence, 
but for the period here under review they were the pre- 
dominant type of charitable effort.” 

The. first society to attack the problem of destitution 
generally, and so to become the forerunner of the A. I. 
C. P.3 of the 4o’s, the immediate predecessor of the 
C. O. S.* of the 70’s, was the New York Society for 
the Prevention of Pauperism formed in 1817.° This 
was the outcome of the interest of a group of men in 

*Many of the eleven soup houses existing in Philadelphia in 1900 
date back almost a century. The ‘Fragment Society” of Boston, de- 
signed “to assist in clothing the destitute, more especially children,” 
was organized in 1815. The Widows’ Society in Boston was started 
in 1816, and in the year following there was organized the Boston 
Fatherless and Widows’ society, both intended primarily for Protestants. 
The records of the Widows’ Society of Hartford, Connecticut, date 
from 1825. These are illustrative of others. ; 

* Of this period of our history Weyl writes: ‘A man of leisure would 
rather have become Director of a local Charitable Society—which 
brought social prestige—than be Supervisor of Highways or School 
Commissioner.” W. E. Weyl, The New Democracy, p. 56. 

*A. I. C. P. means Association for Improving the Condition of the 
Poor. 

*C. O. S. means Charity Organization Society. These abbreviations 
are so useful and have become so popular that they will be used fre- 
quently in this study. 

°Of existing agencies dating from this period mention should be 
made of the Union Benevolent Association of Philadelphia, established 


in 1830, to encourage industry, to , Suppress pauperism and to relieve 
suffering among “the worthy poor.” 


ANTECEDENTS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 67 


New York, some of them Friends, who associated together 
0 devise means of lessening pauperism. They corre- 
ponded with Edward Livingston in New Orleans and 
William Roscoe in England. A study was made of exist- 
ng conditions at home, including records of the courts, 
n which the district attorney codperated. The annual 
‘eports of this society for the years from 1818 to 1824 
snumerated the following as causes of pauperism: 1, 
gnorance; 2, idleness; 3, intemperance; 4, want of 
sconomy; 5, imprudent and hasty marriages; 6° lotteries; 
1, pawnbrokers; 8, houses of ill-fame; 9, gambling 
1ouses; and 10, the numerous charitable institutions of 
‘he city. 

_ Of the remedies suggested many were far-reaching and 
idvanced for the time. It was proposed to divide the 
sity into small districts, each district to have two or three 
workers to visit the indigent. It further proposed to pro- 
‘note savings banks,’ benefit societies, and life insurance; 
0 prevent the access of paupers who have not gained a 
settlement; to procure an entire prohibition of street 
keggars; to aid in giving employment to those who can 
1ot procure it, by establishing houses of employment, or 
yy supplying materials for domestic labor; to promote 
sunday schools; to devise a plan by which all spontaneous 
sharities may flow into one channel; to procure the aboli- 
ion of the great number of shops in which spirituous 
iquors are sold by license. The managers recommended 
he practice of abstaining from giving money to beggars, 
vho usually appropriate what they get to increase the 
wrofits and the business of the dram seller.* 

In short, the society laid down “a program of reform 
‘nd educational improvement such as was scarcely to be 


*It was in 1816 that Philadelphia established its Savings Fund 
ociety, the pioneer of the country. The Bank of Savings in the 
tity of New York was projected that year but did not open fot 
‘usiness until three years later. 
' *Fourth annual report of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism 
j}1 the city of New York, 1821. 








68 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


surpassed later by the associations for improving the con- 
dition of the poor and the charity organization societies.” 4 
Unfortunately, however, the society appears never to have 
put many of its recommendations into practice. It re- 
ported on the penitentiary system of the United States; 
it studied especially the causes of juvenile delinquency. 
Then centering its work on the care of youthful offenders, 
it became finally, in 1824, the board of managers of the 
House of Refuge for New York male juvenile offenders, 

The spirit of inquiry into the causes of pauperism was 
in the air, and, furthermore, not confined to New York 
City. In 1821 appeared the Quincy Report on the pauper 
laws of Massachusetts, dealing with conditions in that 
commonwealth. The report reached five conclusions, of 
which two have especial interest for us. First conclusion: 
“That of all modes of providing for the poor, the most 
wasteful, the most expensive, and most injurious to their 
morals and destructive to their industrious habits is that 
of supply in their own families.” Fifth conclusion: “That 
of all causes of pauperism, intemperance in the use of 
spirituous liquors is the most powerful and universal.” * 

Of greater interest than the Quincy Report was the 
report made in 1824 by J. V. N. Yates, Secretary of State, 
to the New York Legislature. The general conclusions 
are illuminating: 


1. That the existing laws led to litigation of the most 
expensive and hurtful kind, exhausting nearly one-ninth of 
the funds intended for the relief of the poor, and lead- 
ing to harsh removals of many human beings, like felons, 
from no other fault than poverty. 

2. That the poor when farmed out or sold were fre- 
quently treated with barbarity and neglect. 


*E. T. Devine, “Relief and Care of the Poor in their Homes.” Chari- 
ties Review, Vol. AX No. 3% p.1128. (1900) 

* Josiah Quincy, “Report on the Pauper Laws of Massachusetts” 
(1821), now very rare; its text, however, is reprinted from a copy i 
the Sea Public Library in Charities, Vol. III, No. 18, pp. 2-7 
(1899). 


ANTECEDENTS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 69 


_ 3. The education and morals of the children of paupers 
“except in almshouses) were almost wholly neglected. 
They grew up in filth, idleness, ignorance and disease, and 
nany became early candidates for the prison or the grave. 
The evidence on this head was regarded as too volu- 
‘ninous even for reference. 

4. There was no adequate provision for the employ- 
‘ment of the poor throughout the state. Idleness very 
‘yenerally generates vice, dissipation, disease and crime. 
‘ 5. The poor laws had come to encourage the sturdy 
deggar and profligate vagrant. Overseers not infre- 
quently granted relief without sufficient examination into 
the circumstances or the ability of the party claiming it. 
| 6. The laws also held out encouragement to the suc- 
cessful practice of street beggary. 
| 7. Idiots and lunatics did not receive sufficient care and 
attention in the towns where no suitable asylums for 
sheir reception are established.* 





‘There are three ways of dealing with the poor,” wrote 
the author of this report, ‘“‘one, to farm them out to con- 
tractors; another, to relieve them at their homes; the 
third, to sell them at auction” (i.e., a public bidding at 
which he who offered to support them at the lowest price 
‘yecame their keeper). This he refers to as “a species 
of economy much boasted of by our town officers and 
ourchasers of paupers.”” Yates saw no reason for pride 
in this; neither did he subscribe to the plea of ‘“‘“many men 
of great minds, that distress and poverty multiply in pro- 
oortion to the efforts made to relieve them, wherefore the. 
whole subject had better be let alone.” To meet the 
situation as he found it, the author of the inquiry sub- 
‘mitted ‘a fourth way, a poor-house plan which he sub- 
‘mitted with illustrations, as it were, this among others 
from the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism: ‘The 
‘stepping-mill is highly recommended for vagrants, street 


_ *J. V. N. Yates, “Report of the Secretary of State in 1824 on the 
Relief and Settlement of the Poor,” reprinted in the 34th Annual Re- 
port of the State Board of Charities of the State of New York (1900), 


Vol. I, pp. 939-963. 








7O CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


beggars, and criminals.’”’* When we reflect on the con- 
ditions which made this report possible there is a strong 
inclination to criticize our forefathers for the neglect of 
preventive social work, but we must expect our de- 
scendants to reprove us justly for much that we are leav- 
ing undone, especially when they consider the brighter 
light in which we see things. 


THE CONTRIBUTION OF JOSEPH TUCKERMAN 


In every community there are certain forward-looking 
and far-sighted individuals who are at least a generation 
ahead of their time, and whose constructive proposals 
have to await a later day before bearing fruit. Of such 
was Joseph Tuckerman, a pioneer in the field of Amer- 
ican philanthropy, whose work merits more than passing 
notice at this point. A new era of charity began in 
Boston in 1826 as an outgrowth of the Unitarian move- 
ment under the leadership of William Ellery Channing. 
By 1834 Channing’s journals ‘testified to this direction 
of his interest. ‘Causes of poverty to be traced,’ he 
writes. ‘Is not the social order wrong?’ ‘Let the poor 
be my end.’ And again, in more formal phrase, he 
writes, ‘Were I, on visiting a strange country, to see 
a vast majority of the people maimed, crippled and 
bereft of sight, and were I told that the social order 
required this mutilation, I should say, ‘Perish this order!’ 
Such was the fruitful seed scattered over the field of 
philanthropy by this epoch-making man.” * Of the small 
circle of thoughtful men and women of whom he was the 
center, was Joseph Tuckerman, classmate and intimate 
friend, and first ‘‘minister-at-large’” under the Ameri- 
can Unitarian Association. Born in Boston in 1778, 
graduated from Harvard College in 1798, he entered the 


*Jacob A. Riis, “A Modern St. George,” Scribners’ Magazine, Vol. L, 
p. 385 (October, rorr). 

*Francis G. Peabody, “Unitarianism and Philanthropy,” Charities 
Review, Vol. V, p. 26 (1895). 


ANTECEDENTS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 7I 





ninistry. After twenty-five years of parish life, he turned 
0 the work of a city missionary among the Boston poor, 
visely giving it the title, not of a mission, but of a “min- 
stry-at-large.” 1 He read of the working of the Poor Law 
n England, of church and private charity in Scotland; 
ie found out what was going on in the other states of 
he Union; he was one of a commission appointed by the 
douse of Representatives of Massachusetts in 1832 to 
“eport on the care of paupers in the state, and as agent 
)f the commission visited many towns. In the same 
year the ‘Visitor of the Poor,” by Baron De Gerando 
ptanslated by two Boston women, was published in Bos- 
on, with an introduction by Tuckerman. This was one 
of the earliest contributions in this country to the litera- 
ure on charity. De Gerando spoke of him this high 
jraise as a charity worker, “Joseph Tuckerman knows 
the difference between pauperism and poverty.” 
Believing it the part of wisdom to bring others together 
sither to increase their personal intercourse with the poor, 
yr to confer on what they had learned through such inter- 
sourse, he organized in 1832 a company of visitors to 
the poor, and in October, 1833, he brought about a union 
of the ministers-at-large of all denominations for pur- 
yoses of consultation and mutual helpfulness. This led 
n the spring of 1834 to the Association of Delegates from 
he Benevolent Societies of Boston, of which Dr. Tucker- 
nan wrote the first report the year following. The 
ybjects set forth resemble closely those of the Associated 
charities of Boston, organized forty-five years later.* 

It is interesting to note in passing that Yates’ report 
0 the New York legislature in 1824 had stated that the 


} *Tuckerman urged that to secure the proper influence of a ministry- 
it-large, the services were required of not less than four Protestants 
ind one from the Catholic Church. “Elevation of the Poor,” p. 59 
1874). Boston was then a city of about 60,000. 

*“Le Visiteur du Pauvre,” by Joseph Marie De Gerando, translated 
9y Mrs. Horace Mann and Miss Peabody (1832). 

*Miss Zilpha D. Smith, first General Secretary of the Boston Asso- 
siated Charities, believes that the objects of this Association were 
lrawn up without reference to the by-laws of the former organization. 


72 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


families assisted as outdoor poor are reported by the com- 
missioners to be composed chiefly of Irish immigrants 
as are also the vagrants sent to the Bridewell and 
penitentiary.1_ Tuckerman in like vein speaks of the 
influx of poor and ignorant foreigners as one of the 
discouragements to effective charity. For this reason 
he urged steps to prevent the accumulation of the foreign 
poor in the city. The Society for the Prevention of 
Pauperism of Boston (later known as the Industrial Aid 
Society) was established (1835) in direct response to the 
appeals and suggestions made by Dr. Tuckerman, and 
in 1851 the Boston Provident Association was estab- 
lished, following the example given in New York by the 
Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. 

For the seven years of his ministry-at-large, Tucker- 
man worked actively in public institutions and in the 
homes of the poor. These years of service undermined 
his health; and after six more years of lingering in- 
validism, he died in 1840. Although others of course 
were studying the problem of destitution and publishing 
the results of such studies, they were less influential. 
Tuckerman was clearly a forerunner and prophet of the 
movement for the organization of charity. Speaking of 
Tuckerman’s six years of service as minister-at-large, 
Francis G. Peabody says in language which is hardly too 
extravagant, “This very brief and inconspicuous under-. 
taking . . . must always remain the starting point for 
any history of scientific charity in this country.” ” 

One must turn to reports of Tuckerman, made fre- 
quently to the clergymen and laymen of Boston inter- 
ested in the ministry-at-large, to appreciate the breadth 
of view and deep insight into the problem of poverty that 
characterized the man. His reports cover a wide range: 
of fundamental questions, such as the public relief of 
the poor; intellectually and morally neglected children; 


*J. V. N. Yates, “Report to Legislature of New York,” quoted above. 
*Francis G. Peabody, “Unitarianism and Philanthropy,” The Chari- 
ties Review, Vol. V, p. 20. | 





ANTECEDENTS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U.S. 73 


wages paid the poor; the means most effectual for reliev- 
‘ing the wants of the poor; and the need of compulsory 
‘attendance at school. 

' “Tn his intimate acquaintance with the poor, and direct 
‘and frequent intercourse with them, Dr. Tuckerman has 
‘the following fact most forcibly presented and impressed 
‘upon him, and he repeatedly urges it upon our considera- 
tion; namely, the inadequacy of the wages paid to a large 
‘class of the poor to supply even the bare necessities of 
life and the frequent occurrence of periods, even of 
months together, during which numbers, and even large 
jnumbers, in our cities find it impossible to procure any 
employment whatever by which to keep themselves from 
destitution and suffering.”? 

_ Tuckerman’s own words? are of interest on this point. 
“T am sure that there are great numbers of the poor who 
now cannot subsist without the occasional assistance of 
benevolent ‘societies, or of benevolent individuals, who 
would yet most gladly, if they could do it, support them- 
selves by their own labor; and who would never ask for 
charity if the wages of six days’ labor would meet the 
necessities of the week.” . . . “I have known women, 
indeed, to be glad to get pantaloons to make for six and 
a quarter cents per pair, who could not, however, by their 
best industry, make more than two pairs ina day. How, 
then, are they to pay their rent, and to obtain fuel and 
food?” That Tuckerman had broken entirely with the 
simple philosophy of “Lady Bountiful” is further seen 
when he characterizes as “important” and “deserving of 
attention” a communication which he had received from 
a committee appointed by the citizens of Philadelphia, 
“to learn what is the effect upon the comfort and morals 
of the females who depend on their work for a support, of 


*The italics are the editor’s. Editor’s note preceding Part II, on 
“The Wages given to the Poor” (p. 79), of Joseph Tuckerman’s “On 
‘the Elevation of the Poor,” edited in 1874 by Edward Everett Hale, 
‘who brought together selections from Tuckerman’s reports to form 
this little volume. 

* Ibid., p. 81. 


74 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


the low rate of wages paid to that class of society; —to 
what extent the sufferings of the poor are attributable 
to those low wages;—and what is the effect of benevolent, 
or of assistance societies on the industry of the laboring 
poor?” * He believed the doctrine that there must be 
everywhere, and especially in large cities, a certain 
amount of poverty and crime to be as false as it was 
vague” and that the evils of poverty grew out of the 
character of the more prosperous classes as well as of the 
poor.* 

Dr. Tuckerman’s reports dwelt on almost every aspect 
of charity work which has since grown of importance. 
He called attention to the need of improved dwellings for 
the poor, half a century before this modern enterprise 
was undertaken. He anticipates the congestion of life 
in our great cities, and calls for more attractive rural 
homes. He discerns the radical importance of the child- 
problem, and sets it by itself as a special form of charity. 
He sees that the secret of judicious charity is in obtaining 
as perfect a knowledge as may be of all within and with- 
out the individual in a deep respect for every human 
being and in the continuous visitation of individuals by 
individuals.* He has no technique of inquiry but he has 
the aim, and he has already learned that when one knows, 
one sees, both what is to be done, and the resources for 
accomplishing it, and that the individual may be brought 
to cooperate only on the basis of this knowledge. He 
expressly advises a bureau of registration for the common 
use of the overseers of the poor and the benevolent 
societies, “that there shall be a discrimination in the 
distribution of alms by our charitable societies.’° He 


*Editor’s note preceding Part II, on “The Wages given to the Poor” 
(p. 79), of Joseph Tuckerman’s “On the Elevation of the Poor,” edited 
in 1874 by Edward Everett Hale, who brought together selections from 
Tuckerman’s reports to form this little volume, p. 80. 

* Ibid., p. 108. ° 

*TIbid., p. 123. Apparently he would agree with Muirhead, “The 
Starting Point of Poor Law Reform” (1910), pp. 88-9. 

* Ibid., pp. 40-44. 

*Ibid., p. 90. 


| 
. 


estimates that such a measure would give voluntary 
societies thirty-three and one-third per cent additional 
_value for their funds. He thus becomes the father 
of the idea of a Social Service Exchange, an agency 
destined decades later to be adopted by charity organ- 
‘ization societies. His most detailed report, written 
.as agent of a State Commission, is devoted to the general 
‘subject of municipal relief; and in it he advocates with a 
‘radicalism which for his time Peabody ' characterizes as 
“amazing,” the total repeal of the Poor Law system of 
‘that period, tests of work for the able-bodied, houses of 
industry worthy of the name for the more incapable, and 
the reference of all temporary poverty to private relief. 
- His attitude toward ‘soup-houses” is interesting, 
especially in view of their long continued use in some 
places, notably Philadelphia. In one of his reports he 
“says, “Establishments of this kind are well known in 
Europe, and they have been adopted in some cities in 
our Own country in times of great distress among the 
poor. . . . But I have little doubt whether they are 
means of increasing the pauperism of a city.” * 

Of even greater interest to those who would put social 
work to-day on a higher professional plane is the impor- 
tance that he attached to employing in all philanthropic | 
work, not the cheapest men, but men of the highest ability 

-and character and wisdom, men able to add important 
contributions to the current knowledge of the causes and 
character of poverty, and the most effective means of 
its prevention.® 

Of the greatest interest possibly is his belief that in 
spite of all the misery of his day and of the recognized 

complexity of social problems, a way out could be found. 


ANTECEDENTS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 75 








*Francis G. Peabody, “Unitarianism and Philanthropy,” The Charities 
Review, Vol. V, p. 27 (1895). 

*Joseph Tuckerman, “On the Elevation of the Poor” (editor’s title), 
| edited by Edward Everett Hale (1874), p. 86. For a brief account of 
the origin of soup-houses, see B. Kirkman Gray, “A History of English 
Philanthropy,” pp. 257-260 (1905). 
‘um ibid., pp. 51-57. 


76 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


If even a few of our most intelligent and philanthropic 
men, he urges, will study these subjects by an extensive 
personal communication with the poor, and the criminal, 
will meet weekly to bring together their facts and com- 
pare opinions, occasionally publishing these; and when 
they shall see clearly what is needed, combine their efforts 
for the suppression of one and now another of the springs 
of evil—and for the promotion of establishments of good, 
a great and glorious reform might be effected.2 To-day 
in district conferences of the charity organization 
society, in city conferences as well as in the state and 
national conferences are being worked out Tuckerman’s 
principle that if people come to know the poor, and con- 
fer together about their problems, they shall find the 
way out—the various ways out. 

It is but conservative to say that no single forerunner 
of the charity organization movement in America con- 
tributed more to its aims and methods than did Joseph 
Tuckerman. Certain it is that he was the first American 
not only to distinguish between pauperism and poverty 
but to advocate consistently the abolition of outdoor 
relief, the codperation of all forces working on charitable 
problems, the principle of the registration bureau, and 
personal visitation, or friendly visiting, all chief articles 
of the new creed of charity. 


Tue “A, I. C. P.” MoveMENT 


One cannot study this period of the history of char- 
itable effort without seeing the effects in America of the 
economic changes going on in England and Ireland. With 
the application of steam to manufacture in England, with 
the triumph of the factory over domestic production, with 


*“T would place the services which the minister may perform by the 
communications he may make respecting poverty and the poor to the 
more favored classes; by the influence he may exert in calling forth 
kindly and Christian sentiments in these classes toward each other; and 
by the aid he may give in the various measures, both private and 
public, which may be taken either for the remedy or the prevention 
of pauperism and crime.” Jbid., p. 23. 

4‘ Tbid., p. 125. 


ANTECEDENTS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U.S. 77 


the far-reaching social dislocations that these changes 
brought in their train, the great swarming western migra- 
tion began. At the time of which we are now writing 
“the ‘foreign element’ were like an army encamped in the 
midst of New York.” ! This city, “like every other great 
and populous city,” writes a contemporary observer, “is 
largely overrun with an army of beggars of both sexes, 
Tepresenting all ages and nationalities.” 2 The facilities 
for moving the newcomers inland were entirely inade- 
quate, and an increasing number of destitute immigrants 
were stranded in the seaport town. New York, while 
‘the gateway of America, was not the only city facing this 
problem. We have already noted Tuckerman’s comment 
‘on the situation. In 1835, Senior, writing about the 
provisions for the poor and the condition of the laboring 
‘classes in America, says: ‘‘Either an increase of the evils 
of pauperism, or a clearer perception of them, has in- 
‘duced most of the states during the last ten years to 
make both in their laws for the relief of the poor and 
in the administration of those laws changes of great im- 
portance. They consist principally in endeavoring to 
avoid giving relief out of the workhouse and in making 
the workhouse an abode in which none but the really 
destitute will continue.” * 

During the second quarter of the century the atten- 
tion of public spirited citizens seems to have been given 
to moral questions. At least moral considerations received 
‘greater stress as causes of poverty than the economic and 
‘social causes later stressed. It was the heyday of Malthu- 
sianism. The teaching of moral restraint was in the air. 
While many private relief societies of various types con- 


’ 


*Robert W. Bruere, “The Good Samaritan, Incorporated,’ Harper’s 
‘Monthly Magazine, Vol. CXX, p. 834 (1910). 

_ ?J. F. Richmond, “New York and Its Institutions,” 1609-1873. Re- 
‘vised Edition, pp. 505-506 (1873). 

- *Nassau William Senior, “Provision for the Poor and the Condition 
‘of the Laboring Classes in a Considerable Portion of America and 
Europe.” London (1835). 


78 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


tinued to be founded,! “more attention was given to tem- 
perance agitation than to charitable reforms.” 2 Of the 
relief societies organized many united moral objects with 
relief of physical want. This was the period of Tract 
Society and City Mission Society.2 Robert W. Bruere 
points out in discussing the period under review that “The 
theory that people were poor because they were intem- 
perate, thriftless, or lazy was not entirely the product 
of the aristocratic prejudices of the best citizens of the 
day.” “Tt was in great measure true that the 
destitute beggars, who congregated in our cities, suffered 
either through dense ignorance of their opportunities or 
through the lack of the moral and physical stamina that 
led so many of their sturdier fellows to avail themselves 
of the boundless natural resources that America offered 
gratuitously to any who were ready to take a hand in 
building the nation.” * As we are now beginning to realize, 
many doubtless lacked mental stamina as well. Feeble- 
mindedness probably played a large part in the problem of 
pauperism. 

Even at this early date, it was charged that politics had 
entered in at least one place to complicate the situa- 
tion. In 1826 in New York suffrage was extended to all 
male citizens, except negroes, without property qualifica- 
tions. This occurred only a few years after “the ener- 
getic cunning and astuteness of Aaron Burr had definitely 
established Tammany Hall as the dominant political 
power in New York. The enfranchised beneficiaries of 

*In this period, 1837, was incorporated the Philadelphia Union Benev- 
olent Society, the first of the relief associations or societies for the 
improvement of the condition of the poor which was to constitute 
the first general movement in the United States for improving the 
material and social conditions of the poor in cities. See Proceedings 
of the National Conference of Charities and Correction (1899), Pp. 359. 

“E. T. Devine, “The Relief and Care of the Poor in Their Homes.” 
The Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 121 (1900). 

*New York City Tract Society was formed 1827. New York 
Protestant Episcopal City Mission Society (oldest City Mission in 
N. Y. C.) was incorporated in 1833. 


*Robert W. Bruere, “The Good Samaritan, Incorporated,” Harper's 
Monthly Magazine, Vol. CXX, p. 834 (1910). ’ 


4 


fated: . 


ANTECEDENTS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 79 


‘public poor relief thus acquired a new status as compliant 
‘troopers in political campaigns and offered a constant 
temptation to politicians to disburse city money with 
Yeference to elections rather than to the need or worth 
of the recipients.’ 

In 1837-38 there came a winter to New York with 
‘want so bitter that it set at naught all efforts at meeting 
it, including the poor house and stepping-mill. All sorts 
‘of hasty, ill-advised relief agencies were set on foot and 
they all together failed. By 1840 there were over thirty 
Telief-giving societies in the city of New York, organized 
‘Chiefly for particular phases of poverty, and conducted 
‘with little information and without concerted action. 
‘An informally constituted committee was organized in 
‘the winter of 1842-43 to provide facilities for meeting the 
‘unusual distress which followed the industrial depression 
‘and a severe winter. After making a careful examina- 
‘tion of the situation, the committee condemned current 
schemes of charity on four counts: lack of discrimination 
in giving relief, lack of codperation, failure to establish 
‘personal intercourse with the recipients of alms at their 
homes, and failure to relate their work to the existing 
public provision for the destitute.” 

Out of such conditions an imperative demand arose for 
a comprehensive and well-considered attempt to grapple 
with poverty and to give charity a new and broader out- 
look. Thus was born the Association for Improving the 
Condition of the Poor of New York City and through it 
the “A. I. C. P.” Movement as it was popularly called, 
the predominant charitable development in America for 
the next thirty years. Among those who had taken an 
interest in the work of the committee just mentioned was 
Robert M. Hartley, who became the founder of the New 
mork A. I. C. P., and the father of the movement 


*Robert W. Bruere, “The Good Samaritan, Incorporated,’ Harper's 
Monthly Magazine, Vol. CXX, p. 834 (1910). 

*For a verbatim statement of the four conclusions of the committee, 
‘see E. T. Devine, “The Relief and Care of the Poor in Their Homes,” 
The Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 183 (1900). 


80 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


launched thereby. As its corresponding secretary and 
general agent for many years, he became the guiding 
spirit of the organization. In founding the .new associa- 
tion, Hartley builded slowly. He first visited Boston, 
Philadelphia, Baltimore and other cities and corresponded 
with persons in this country and abroad that the new 
organization might avoid principles and methods not 
tested by experience. It appears that he considered these 
visits of little value, and that the system which he subse- 
quently put into operation was elaborated out of his own 
mind.t There seems however to be evidence that he was 
unconsciously influenced by his study, especially by de- 
velopments in Germany. 

The name chosen for the new association gives its 
object. It was to be an organization interested primarily 
in improving the condition of the poor. Its energies were 
not to be dissipated on confirmed paupers. It was to 
stand ‘fas a friendly and efficient barrier between the 
poverty-stricken sons and daughters of misfortune and 
the course of pauperism”: ? and by the kind attentions, 
counsel and aid it was able to bestow to save ‘“‘multitudes 
from the lower, and almost hopeless depths of social 
degradation” * into which they otherwise would descend. 

It was not the purpose of the new society to supersede 
any other, but simply to supply what in others was man- 
ifestly lacking. But so broad was its plan, that in a 
short time most of the others disbanded, leaving a far 
greater burden for it to carry than it had originally 
anticipated. The association divided the city into) 
twenty-two districts, which were again subdivided into 
sections so small (278 for the city) that the visitor resid-| 
ing in each could call at the house of every applicant. 
Up to this time the customary practice of charitable 
organizations in America had been to limit their relief) 


*Memorial of Robert M. Hartley, p. 187 (1882). 
* Ibid., pp. 376-377. 
* Ibid., pp. 376-377. 


ANTECEDENTS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. Ss. 81 


to special groups, such as certain nationalities, for special 
types of service or for special kinds of relief. The sig- 
nificant feature of the new association was its extension 
to cover the entire city. The visitor was a resident male 
volunteer, a member always of one of the wealthier fam- 
ilies. He “pledged himself to withhold all relief from 
unknown persons, to visit in their homes those who 
appeared to require benevolent services, and, by discrim- 
inating and judicious relief combined with admonitions 
to prudence, thrift, diligence and temperance, to help 
them discover those hidden springs of virtue within them- 
selves from which alone their prosperity might flow.”} 
Hartley thus made a reality his dream of a large body of 
volunteers* who should devote themselves to improving 
the condition of the poor by personal service and knowl- 
edge of their needs. It is almost needless to add that 
remonstrance was often necessary to prevent these visitors 
from relaxing efforts at moral reform and calling in the 
discredited system of relying entirely upon almsgiving. 
The visitor is constantly enjoined that it is his duty to 
send all who bear “the mark of the corporation” (i.e., 
those cases considered as not improvable yet destitute) 
to the almshouse commissioner for relief, when the respon- 
sibility of the association towards such families ceases. 
To the “association” poor no supplies were given save 
‘hrough the visitor. The association gave no money and 
Jnly such articles of food and clothing, in small quan- 
ities, as are least liable to abuse, ‘“‘giving always coarser 
supplies than industry will procure.” * In 1846 it organ- 
-zed a system for the gratuitous supply of medical aid to 
the indigent sick in portions of the city not reached by 
oxisting dispensaries. The association required every 
yeneficiary to abstain from intoxicating drinks, to send 








~ +Robert W. Bruere, “The Good Samaritan, Incorporated,” Harper’s 
Yonthly Magazine, Vol. CXX, p. 835 (1910). 

2Tt was not until thirty-seven years later that this society employed 
ts first paid visitor. 
_*J. F. Richmond, “New York and Its Institutions,” 1609-1873, p. 506. 


82 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


young children to school, and to apprentice children of 
suitable age. 

Thus, the new organization began with “clear em- 
phasis” upon the five following general principles for the 
administration of relief, which have survived with unim- 
paired validity to the present time. These are: “Relief 
out to be based upon an inquiry into the needs of the 
recipient. A district system equipped with local workers, 
including volunteers, offers the best method of relief dis- 
tribution. Certain conditions, such as temperance, school 
attendance and vocational training, should be insisted 
upon. Beggars and the wilfully dependent should be 
deterred by making their lot less comfortable than that 
of able-bodied workers. Codperation with other charities 
is essential.”! But the association did not limit its 
activities to the personal needs of individuals; it early 
turned to the need of improving neighborhoods and social 
conditions generally. While refraining from undertaking 
certain reforms to which it would have been inclined, it 
was active in several fundamental reforms, of which 
probably the most important was the agitation for im- 
proved dwellings, the first fruit of which was the “report 
of the committee on the sanitary condition of the labor- 
ing classes of the city of New York with remedial sug- 
gestions,” published in 1853. This report contained 
definite recommendations for legislative action, as well 
as an appeal to capitalists and owners of real estate to 
embrace the opportunity before them and to take advan- 
tage of “the singular privilege of becoming benefactors of 
the poor, with pecuniary advantage to themselves.” “It 
appeared that most of the new tenement houses were on 
so contracted and penurious a scale that they were actu- 
ally inferior to many of the old buildings whose places 
they supplied, that vice and pauperism were perpetuated 
by such causes, the almshouse and prisons supplied with 


1Porter R. Lee, “Three Score Years and Ten,” an editorial. The 
Survey, Vol. XXI, p. 225 (1913). 


ANTECEDENTS OF THE MOVEMENT.IN THE U. S. 83 


recruits and the city burdened with taxes for the support 
of dependents.” * Besides, for many years the Association 
made inspections of tenements, reported as to sanitary 
condition and, if necessary, called upon the authorities to 
enforce laws. 

Of hardly less importance the Association inaugurated 
a milk campaign of the most far-reaching character and 
was instrumental in securing a law to prevent the adulter- 
ation of milk. In addition, it waged unceasing war with 
the public nuisances of the city, its lotteries, Sabbath 
desecration, gambling dens and intemperance. In 1851 
it projected the New York Juvenile Asylum. A public 
washing and bathing establishment was established in 
1852, at an expense of $42,000, and the following year 
the Association procured an act to provide for the care 
and instruction of idle truant children. 

In 1854 the Children’s Aid Society of New York City 
was formed by the demands of “‘a public sentiment which 
the Association had largely created.””»* A Workmen’s 
Home was erected in 1855, by the direction of the Associa- 
tion at an expense of $90,000. In 1863 it organized the 
Society for the Relief of the Ruptured and Crippled. One 
should not fail to mention among the enterprises of the 
earlier days, certain public lectures on personal and do- 
mestic hygiene for which the Association was responsible. 

From what has preceded it is apparent that Hartley 
was not ignorant of the vast sea of pauperism about him. 
His Association, however, disclaimed all responsibility in 
regard to the existence of the evil, its increase or exter- 
mination, except it came within its prescribed bounds,’ 
such as any effort that might educate the public to desist 
from indiscriminate alms-giving. In line with this Hartley 
wrote, among other things, a paper on ‘‘What Shall Be 
Done with Paupers and Criminals,” in which he states 


*E. T. Devine, “Relief and Care of the Poor in Their Homes,” The 
Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 187 (1900). 
7 a Richmond, “New York and Its Institutions,” p. 508 (1873). 
-“Memorial of Robert M. Hartley,” pp. 376-377 (1882). 


84 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


that “‘it will not be doubted by those who have carefully 
explored the poorer quarters of the city, that there are 
at least 20,000 of the lower strata of the population who, 
though able to work, mostly subsist without labor. In 
their general habits they are charlatan impostors. Many 
of them make their rounds among the numerous private 
charitable organizations, which have no knowledge of 
each other’s actions, nor yet of the applicants; artful 
beggars turn this ignorance to their own advantage, and 
are aided by many societies at the same time, without 
detection.” 1 The first annual report of the new Associa- 
tion pointed out that “without codperation too little will 
be gained in the contest with the forces of experienced 
and crafty pauperism; with it, the walls of Jericho will 
fall down.” Unfortunately no practical steps were ever 
successfully taken to insure such codperation between the 
charitable societies caring for the poor of the city, so that 
in spite of the enlarged public and private provisions for 
the relief of the destitute, ‘‘the streets were still filled with 
mendicants, the benevolent were harassed with applica- 
tions, and importunate impostors were constantly obtain- 
ing the aid which was designed only for the needy and 
deserving.” 

“To remove the evil,” writes Hartley, ““we must remove 
the causes; and these being chiefly moral—whatever sub- 
sidiary appliances may be used—they admit only moral 
remedies.” 2 Accordingly the publication of tracts and 
pamphlets became an important part of the work of the 
Association. Thus many copies of a twelve-page pam- 
phlet entitled “The Economist” were circulated, and Poor 
Richard’s famous brochure, “The Way to Wealth” was 
published as a tract by the Association with, however, 
several appended extracts from Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, 
calculated to supply what was regarded as a want of 
religious sentiment in the original. The language of the 


1«“Wfemorial of Robert M. Hartley,” p. 375 (1882). 
*Ibid., p. 307 (1882). 


i 


ANTECEDENTS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 85 


‘tracts was outspoken. ‘They contained no sentimental- 
‘izing. The appeal, couched in moral phrases, was always 
to self-help. The following sentences culled from one 
_are illustrative: 


“Every able-bodied man in this country may support 
himself and family comfortably; if you do not, it is prob- 
ably owing to idleness, improvidence, or intemperance. 
', . . You will gossip and smoke, neglect your children and 
beg, live in filth and discomfort, drink and carouse, do 
almost anything rather than work, and expect, forsooth, 
_to be supported by charity. . . . Some of you in all hon- 
esty ask not alms, but work; but how will you get what 
‘does not exist? There are so many more hands than 
work that by remaining here you are doomed to starve 
In idleness or subsist by charity. . . . To the sober and 
industrious we say, ‘Stay not here in idleness and want, 
when the wide and fertile country offers you employment 
and all that is needful for comfort and elevation.’ ” 


The example set in New York City by Hartley and his 
associates resulted in the launching of many similar asso- 
Ciations in American and several in Europe. While the 
association in New York City supplied the model, these 
newer societies emanated in their respective places from 
the same common necessity and the same charitable 
‘Impulse that led to the organization of the pioneer society. 

Brooklyn, then a separate municipality, organized its 
‘Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor 
‘almost simultaneously with New York City (1843). Its 
Visitors’ Manual” was similar to that of New York, that 
the system might be uniform in both cities. In 1849 the 
Baltimore Association for the Improvement of the Condi- 
‘tion of the Poor was founded with objects similar to the 
‘New York and Brooklyn associations. Of the large cities, 
‘Boston was next to follow, establishing the Boston Provi- 
dent Association in 1851. The Boston Association, like 
its predecessors, districted the city, each subdivision of 


86 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


which had its volunteer visitor whose business it was to 
visit, to investigate, and if necessary to relieve all families 
known to be in distress, including those who were referred 
to them by subscribers through whose contributions the 
Association was supported.? 

In Philadelphia in 1855 a committee appointed by a 
town meeting for the ‘“‘Relief of the Suffering Poor” out- 
lined a scheme of work including the districting of the 
city similar to the A. I. C. P. of other cities, except that 
the members of a committee were to be a body corporate 
under the name of ‘“The Philadelphia Society for the Pre- 
vention of Pauperism and the Relief of the Deserving 
Poor,” and were to be chosen from each ward of the city 
from persons fitted by experience and judgment for the 
position, first by a convention of Benevolent Societies 
then meeting, and thereafter by the Mayor, the Judges of 
the city or the City Councils. Little ever seems to have 
come of this elaborate plan. In 1859, because of the 
protest of the taxpayers that they were supporting at 
least 1,000 able-bodied men and women, the appropria- 
tion for outdoor relief was cut down. Conditions gen- 
erally did not materially change until 1878, when a com- 
mittee was formed to provide some means by which the 
charities of the city might be protected from the countless 
impositions practiced upon them, which resulted in the 
formation of the Philadelphia Society for Organizing 
_ Charity, later described (see pp. 187-193). 

In 1857, following the financial crisis of that year, the 

*An illuminating picture of provisions in Boston for the poor whe 
were at the same time incurable is found in the following passage. 
“For such there remained only the almshouse. Largely by the effort 
of Miss Harriet Ryan, the Channing Home ‘for the treatment of in- 
curable diseases came into existence in 1857. The number of patients 
at one time was limited to fifteen, since the care of that number was 
‘as much as one woman could do.’ As Miss Ryan was devoting her 
mornings to her work as a hairdresser in order to earn money for the 
institution and in the late afternoon often went about with a basket 
to collect food for her patients this assumption was probably correct.” [ 
William H. Mahoney, “Benevolent Hospitals in Metropolitan Boston,” 


Quarterly Publication of American Statistical Association, Vol. XIII, 
Pp. 420 (10913). 3 


ANTECEDENTS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 87 


“Chicago Relief and Aid Society” was organized. Although 
the society adopted a different name, it was undoubtedly 
indebted directly, or through the influence of other 
societies which had copied the plan, to the New York 
Association for many of its leading features. This is 
shown most clearly in the general rules of the society, 
which follow at most points the rules of the parent organ- 
ization. As in New York, a division of the city into 
districts was instituted in Chicago. In 1871, when the 
great Chicago fire occurred, destroying $192,000,000 
worth of property, taking approximately 300 lives and 
destroying about one-half of the homes of the city, leav- 
ing 98,500 persons homeless, the Relief and Aid Society, 
at the request of the Mayor and the Citizens’ Committee 
within a few days took entire charge of all contributions 
for the needy. This was a task of such magnitude as 
had up to that time probably never fallen to the lot of 
any other charitable organization in Europe and America. , 
It required the receiving and disbursing within a period 
of about six months of the sum of $5,000,000 for the 
relief of sufferers from the fire. In this work the society 
“gave a notable example of the efficiency, the true econ- 
omy of organized over unorganized relief.” The sub- 
sequent history of the crystalization of this association, 
its antagonism to the changing standards of relief-giving 
looking to greater efficiency, affords but one of the many 
instances of philanthropic enterprises which have out- 
grown their usefulness. 

In 1860 the St. Louis Provident Association, another 
society belonging to this pre-charity organization epoch, 
was founded because of the distress incident to the im- 
pending Civil War, a calamity doubly severe in a slave- 
holding city on the frontier, as St. Louis was then. Up 
to that time there had been no great call for charity in 
the city, which was a rapidly growing prosperous town 


i Jeffrey R. Brackett, “Supervision and Education in Charity,” p. 14 
(1903). 


88 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


of 160,773 persons. During the war, the Association did 
yeoman service in meeting the immediate distress of the 
time.? 

In 1876 the St. Paul Society for the Relief of the Poor 
was organized, following in the wake of the depression 
of ’73. It was the last society to be organized as a part 
of the movement inaugurated by Robert Hartley forty 
years earlier. At the time of its organization, the founder 
of the New York association wrote “that applications for 
the publications of the association (The New York A. L. 
C. P.) had exceeded the supply, that at least twenty-nine 
organizations had been formed in the United States on its 
acknowledged plan. 

It is surprising that a movement which began with so 
much promise should lose whatever grip it once had on 
the throat of bad conditions. Such, however, is the fact 
recorded by many in describing the conditions in the 
charitable world in the period just preceding the birth 
of the charity organization movement in 1877.7 The 
function of dispensing material aid so submerged all 
others that the Associations for Improving the Conditions 


*The St. Louis Association demonstrates the possibility of an old 
established institution learning to adjust to meet new conditions by 
employing modern methods. St. Louis has never had a C. O.S., due in 
part to the belief that it is best to combine the work of a relief 
society with that of a charity organization society. While for a number 
of years preceding 1890 the association hardly served as more than 
a society to provide “hand-outs” for those in distress, since then the 
association has modernized its methods of work so that to-day it has 
assumed the functions of a society for organizing charity. In Chicago 
and Baltimore the older relief societies have been merged with tlhe 
respective charity organization society in each city. In Philadelphia 
and Boston there has been a continued co-existence of the two kinds 
of agencies; while in New York City both an A. I. C. P. anda C. OS 
exist, though the present similarity of some of the functions of the 
two agencies means a certain duplication of machinery in caring for 
the poor of the city. 

*See S. H. Gurteen, “Handbook of Charity Organization,” pp. 118, 110 
(1882) ; Jeffrey R. Brackett, “Supervision and Education in Charity,” p. 
130 (also see page 14); E. T. Devine, “Relief and Care of the Poor in 
Their Homes,” The Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 268 (1900); Chas. D. 
Kellogg, “Report of the Committee on History of Charity Organization,” 


ANTECEDENTS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 89 


of the Poor generally had sunk into a sea of alms-giving. 
““The work of these associations,” writes Warner, “was 
done more or less well; but there is a general agreement 
‘that twenty years after their organization, private alms- 
‘giving in American cities, for the most part through 
formal and even incorporated societies, was profuse and 
‘chaotic, while still not meeting the demands made upon 
hit. p24 
Why, it is natural to ask, did this movement, beginning 
in the 40’s with such bright prospects, fail to fulfill the 
expectations which it awoke? 
| One answer is that unfortunately the objects of these 
associations stated in the charters and articles of incor- 
‘poration ‘“‘were seldom kept as clearly in view as they 
were at the time when the first societies were founded. 
‘At the end of the 70’s they had become for the most 
: part simply relief societies, and often their administration 
of relief had fallen into routine methods and was far 
from contributing as much as it should to the elevation 
of the physical and moral condition of the indigent. 
‘ Little use was made of voluntary friendly 
visitors, and consequently organized relief, if it accom- 
plished its purpose of aiding the destitute, did not educate 
the charitable public in intelligent and discriminating 
relief methods. Public outdoor relief was in many places 
lavish, and its administration careless, extravagant and 
in some instances, corrupt. There were no adequate 
safeguards against deception, no common registration of 
relief to prevent duplication, and private almsgiving, 
while it was profuse in meeting the obvious distress, was 
admittedly and wholly inadequate in meeting situations 


in Proceedings, National Conference Charities and Correction, 20th 
session (1893) ; E. T. Devine, “Principles of Relief,” p. 344 (1904); Rev. 
James M. Pullman, “The Development of Charity Organization,” Lend- 
a-Hand, Vol. XI, p. 422 (1893). 

*Amos G. Warner, “American Charities,” Revised Edition, p. 442 
(1908). 


go CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


which require generous financial contributions, and long 
continued and persistent personal attention.’ 

A fundamental defect in Hartley’s original plan seems 
to have lain in the division of work given to the volun- 
teers. The visitors themselves were responsible for the 
decision as to giving relief and gave it themselves. They 
had to account for it and that kept their minds on relief. 

The fact that not until thirty-seven years after its 
organization was the first paid visitor employed, deprived 
these volunteer visitors of a conception of a progressive 
knowledge of individual treatment resulting from a force 
of workers trained for service. 

Some of the largest associations in the movement ulti- 
mately discontinued all volunteer service in order to 
promote “efficiency in the disbursement of relief.” ? This 
swing from an all-volunteer service to a non-volunteer 
service was fraught with equally serious consequences.® 
The reason for allowing volunteers to drop out of the 
service of these associations would seem to indicate that 
some of the responsible leaders in the movement stood 
little chance of organizing the charitable spirit of their 
respective communities.* 

The situation was made more difficult by the fact that 
although Hartley stressed the value of codperation, no 
practical steps, as has been pointed out, were ever suc- 


*E. T. Devine, “Relief and Care of the Poor in Their Homes,” The 
Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 268 (1900). I am indebted to Mr, 
Sherman C. Kingsley for the statement that the emphasis was on 
momentary treatment, some investigators priding themselves on treating 
cases but once. 

?E. T. Devine, “The Relief and Care of the Poor in Their Homes,” 
Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 308. 

*See Section on rdle of the volunteer, pp. 145-156. 

*The case of the Provident Association of Boston is illustrative. 
“The volunteer visitors were found difficult to control; many lacked 
judgment; most of them were extravagant and often neglected to 
forward their monthly reports. Capt. A. G. Goodwin, who was for 
20 years the general agent, used to say that the visitors often gave 
him more trouble than the applicants. So the volunteers were grad- 
ually allowed to drop off, their places being filled by paid visitors.” 
E. T. Devine, “The Relief and Care of the Poor in Their Homes,” 
Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 180 (1900). 


ANTECEDENTS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. QI 


cessfully taken to insure such cooperation between the 


charitable societies caring for the poor of the city. The 
A. I. C. P. movement failed in part at least through lack 


_of preparation to carry through its ambitious program. 


Of the other factors contributing to this failure, not the 
least important was the fact that conditions which the 
earlier A. I. C. P.’s had been called upon to face had 


changed, but the A. I. C. P.’s did not change with them, 
but often sank deep in ruts of administering relief by 


“rule of thumb.” In the 40’s applicants for relief were 
not so absolutely foreign to the persons and societies to 


_ which they applied for relief as they had become in the 
_70’s. While complete investigation in the 40’s might have 


always proved beneficial, its neglect in the 70’s was spell- 
ing only disaster and chaos. Conditions had changed in 


_ another respect. The A. I. C. P. movement was inaugu- 


rated by Protestants, controlled by Protestants and sup- 


ported by Protestant money. Although they aided other 
than Protestants, “no emphasis was laid on their not 
being sectarian. Their influence and their effort on 


_ public opinion was largely confined to Protestant circles. 


This was not strange at a time when the intelligence and 
wealth of most of our American cities was so exclusively 
Protestant.” As the need for increasing codperation was 
made necessary by the increasing chaos in charity, 
emphasis on non-sectarianism became imperative. 
Besides being handicapped by its sectarianism, the 
movement doubtless suffered in not having a demo- 
cratic basis. As has been pointed out, the volunteer 
visitors were chosen from among the wealthy families. 
An important part of the answer to our question lies in 
the fact that the various associations had undergone a 
process of crystallization. They ceased being flexible, 
progressive. This was doubtless in part due to the per- 
sonnel of those in control in the 70’s. “The officials 


* Robert W. de Forest, “The Federation of Organized Charities,” Chari- 


_ ties, Vol. XII, p. 20 (1904). 


Q2 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


employed were very often persons whose chief qualifica- 
tions appear to have been their own need of employment, 
and to those officials, too often, was left by bodies of 
managers the actual management.” + 

All social institutions are prone to crystallization. That 
some attain great age is almost prima facie evidence that 
the process of crystallization has never proceeded so far 
at any one time but that it was possible (changing the 
figure) to pour new wine into old bottles. Occasionally 
in the history of social institutions new bottles become 
necessary because crystallization had proceeded too far. 
Such seems to have been the reason for the independent 
and almost spontaneous birth in the 70’s and early 
80’s of a number of new societies whose special con- 
cern was to be the organization of charitable effort that 
greater efficiency might result. 

In any such comparison it should always be remem- 
bered that those working in the earlier days had less 
experience behind them on which to base their con- 
clusions and guide their efforts. Moreover, the time and 
attention of the public spirited and humanitarian of the 
nation had been turned to the all-absorbing national ques- 
tions which for more than a century had involved the 
permanency of the republic. At such times it was easy, 
at least for the average man, to forget that the poor 
existed, or that they needed other attention than the doles 
which the relief societies had become accustomed to give. 
Yet Tuckerman’s faith that actually visiting the poor will 
help to find the way out is shown by the fact that Miss 
Morse, the founder of the Confidential Exchange in 

* Jeffrey K. Brackett, “Supervision and Education in Charity,” p. 14 
aane time when the New York Charity Organization Society 
was organized in 1882, the New York Association for Improving the 
Condition of the Poor which started out with its large corps of district 
visitors, and which in the fifties and sixties had been the champion of 
tenement house reform, had reduced its functions largely to the giving 
of mere material relief at the hands of a paid agent and his paid 


assistants.” Robert W. de Forest, “The Federation of Organized Chari- 
ties,” Charities, Vol. XII, p. 20 (1904). 


ANTECEDENTS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 93 


‘Boston, the first in the country,! conceived that idea 
‘while she was a visitor of the Boston Provident Associa- 
tion, and by the fact that it was Dr. Vogel, another over- 
worked volunteer visitor of the same association who 
encouraged Mrs. Fields and Mrs. Lodge to establish the 
Cooperative Society of Volunteer Visitors of Boston.” It 
would be interesting to trace the development of various 
‘societies existing to-day which have survived from the 
‘movement just reviewed, but such would carry us too far 
afield. Suffice it to say that few if any of the criticisms 
justly made during the 70’s and early 80’s, longer obtain. 
. *See pp. 199, 200. 
*See p. 178. 


CHAP TE Ram, 


THE FUNCTIONS OF A CHARITY CRGANIZA- 
TION SOCIETY 


THE student of society rightly asks what is the peculiar 
function of every social institution, what services does 
it render of which society would be deprived if it did not | 
exist? While there have been differences of opinion in 
many communities upon im- 
portant questions of policy, 
fortunately there is no ap- 
preciable doubt or confusion 
as to the functions of the 
charity organization society. 
They are threefold: first and 
basic, the rehabilitation of 
Yjye OS VG families which for any reason 
MEE — Ih / fail to be self-sufficient; sec- 


ENCY "RELIEF 





——— 


Sr =; ond, the education of the 
= AR a e * e 

Za community in correct prin- 
From the Program of the Thirty- ciples of relief; and third, 


first Annual Meeting of The gid in the elimination of the 
Charity Organization Society 


of the City of New Vork. causes of poverty. 





I. FAMILY REHABILITATION 


Believing that the family is a sound institution of 
great value and that its relationships when normal may 
prove “the means of restored independence and _ pros- 
perity,”? the first function of charity organization workers 


*Helen Bosanquet, “The Family,” p. 342 (1906). 
94 


FUNCTIONS OF A CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY 95 


is the restoration of normal family life as far as that may 


be possible * in all families coming under their care. 
“What charity organization stands for specifically is 


‘intensive, discriminating, thorough, and sympathetic con- 


sideration of the individual man, woman, or child, of the 
particular family which for any reason fails to be self- 
supporting and self-sufficient.” It is its especial concern 


to “make a careful study of each family that becomes 


dependent, devising on the basis of this knowledge a plan 


| for its rehabilitation.” 3 


Previous to the advent of the charity organization 


society there were agencies that gave the poor fuel, and 
agencies that gave them clothing, and agencies even that 
‘gave them soup. There were few or no agencies that 
possessed that particular kind of persevering industry 
-which makes it a specialty “to take trouble to find out 


what to do, and then get it done; that will ask every 
question, think out every detail, write every letter, pay 
every visit that can possibly make the poor better off.” * 
Since the days of the earlier charity organization societies 


specialization in social work has been carried so far as 


to make this type of service even still more necessary. 
To-day as never before is there need of an agency like a 
charity organization society which knows how to use 
specialists and how to codrdinate the many kinds of 
specialized social work that are coming into existence. 
The multiplicity of social agencies which to-day touch 


the family at various angles, such as children’s agencies, 


hospital social service departments, and visiting nurse as- 
sociations, naturally raises the question as to what should 


*For a definition of “normal,” see Margaret F. Byington, “The Normal 
Family,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sci- 


ence, Vol. LX XVII, pp. 26-27 (10918). 


*Edward T. Devine, “Social Ideals Implied in Present American 


Programs of Voluntary Philanthropy,” Publications of*the American 


' Sociological Society, Vol. VII, p. 186 (1912). 


*Margaret Byington, “What Social Workers Should Know About 


Their Own Communities,” p. 27 (1911 edition). 


*Mary E. Richmond, “How a Web of Organized Charity Is Spun,” 


Charities, Vol. X, p. 126 (1903). 


96 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


be a proper division of the field of family rehabilitation 
among them, especially in view of the probable need for 
limiting intake to improve standards of work. The prob- 
lem is still to be worked out. It seems reasonable, how- 
ever, to say that the agency which is logically in the best 
position to make such a division is the local charity or- 
ganization society because it stands, or should, at the 
centre of the family welfare work of the community. 

In the discharge of its first function then, a charity 
organization society is to those who are economically and 
socially ill, what a physician is to the individual physically 
sick. The relation in both cases is, in some aspects at 
least, that of expert and patient.? 


II. EpUCATION OF THE COMMUNITY IN CORRECT 
PRINCIPLES OF RELIEF 


“The charity organization society undertakes a more 
difficult task than the direct relief of distress. This is 
to insure that the limited amount of charitable work 
which any one society may perform shall be done in such 
a way as to train the volunteer who cooperates in doing 
it.’ * A charity organization society seeks constantly to 
interest volunteers in its work because it views as not 
least among its functions ‘‘the education and training of 
the charitably disposed individual, the men and women 
who are willing to give either time or money, or both, for 
the relief of distress.” ? The really fundamental and 
peculiar principle of a charity organization society is to 
help the poor by the education of the public in wise and 
adequate charitable methods. “It is not too much to say 
that the chief aim of the charity organization society is 

*No adequate term has yet been coined to describe the relationship 
of persons under the care of a charity organization society to the 
society. The terms “client,” “patient” and “ward,” though each has 
its merits, are hardly adequate. The term client however is being used 
increasingly. 


*E. T. Devine, “Principles of Relief,” p. 354 (1904). 
* [bid. 


FUNCTIONS OF A CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY 9Q7 


‘to improve the charitable methods of the general public.’ 
The quality of the benevolence of a community is the 
direct test of the efficiency of a charity organization 
society. Other tests while valuable are none the less 
indirect. A charity organization society should develop 
standards of family work for the while community, even 
though it ultimately loses its own life thereby. ‘After 
all allowances are duly made,” writes Jeffrey R. Brackett, 
“while many of the societies for organizing charity cannot 
be counted really as educational forces, the fact remains 
that the leading societies are distinctly educational and 
‘Tepresent a remarkable movement for progress. They 
‘stand for study of causes of need, for the diffusion of 
knowledge on all matters of charity administration and 
Teuef.””* 


A CHARITY ORGANIZATION SocrEtTy CiLatims No 
MONOPOLY OF CHARITY 


The first work therefore of a charity organization 
society is to help people make their own individual charity 
more effective, not to do the work of people for them. 
A charity organization society stands for the ‘“‘democ- 
ratizing of social welfare efforts.” ? It does not claim 
or want a monopoly of all the charity of a community.* 
Charitable relief is supposed to be very well organized 
when it is honestly administered, avoids duplicating the 
work of other relief agencies and is not wasted on arrant 
imposters. ‘But,’ adds Miss Richmond, “relief is not 
Organized in the charity organization sense of the word 
If it is permitted to check the development of the char- 
itable spirit among the poor or among the charitable them- 


*E. T. Devine, “Principles of Relief,” p. 354 (1904). 
"Jeffrey R. Brackett, “Supervision and Education in Charity,” p. 133 

1903). 

*See interesting article with this title by John Melpolder, The Survey, 
Vol. XXXVII, pp. 303-304 (1916). 

“It is of interest to note that this position was taken by the London 
‘Mendicancy Society in 1805. See p. 51. 


98 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


selves. It checks charity if it is separated from personal 
relations with the poor, or is used as a substitute for such 
relations. If it relieves people of any share of just respon- 
sibility toward relatives, friends, fellow church mem- 
bers, employees, or less favored acquaintances, it checks 
charity. Any form of organized relief that ignores these 
dangers or does not strive earnestly to minimize them, 
is itself more dangerous than disorganized relief possibly 
can be.’? A charity organization society should never 
say, ‘Subscribe to us, and we’ll protect you from the poor; 
we'll do the rest.” It should rather serve as a channel 
“through which the charity of a community may flow 
from its people to its poverty, with least waste and with 
greatest efficiency.’ 

What has been said of the possibility of lessening 
the charitable spirit of any community applies with 
equal force to the possibility of pauperizing other social 
agencies, especially in the matter of investigation. Should 
a C. O. S. investigate for other local agencies, for the 
department of Public Health, for State institutions? 
Aside from the fact that investigation (diagnosis) is an 
inseparable part of treatment, experience seems to answer 
this question negatively, or at least that the service should 
never be continued longer than is necessary to show the 
agency or institution in question how it should be done. 
Time and energy had better be spent in bringing pressure 
on public officials and others to improve their own work 
than to do it for them. However, as a matter of practical 
expediency, the charity organization society may, as in 
more than one community, investigate for the Poor Law 
officials or actually handle the entire public outdoor relief 
work of the community; relief being granted by the public 
officials only on the requisition of the local charity organ- 
ization society. A description of such an arrangement 

*M. E. Richmond, “What is Charity Organization?” Charities Review, 
Vol. IX, p. 492 (1900). 


* Porter R. Lee, “Treatment,” p. 11, pamphlet published by the Char- 
ity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation (1910). 


FUNCTIONS OF A CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY 99 


recently inaugurated closes with the following signifi- 
cant words, “While the ideal plan for the future is for the 
public department to engage a trained staff adequate to 
give constructive treatment to all cases, the present plan 
is believed to have its advantages. It is gaining public 
support for modern methods of relief to such an extent 
that when the public is called upon to pay the salaries of a 
large trained staff, it will be more willing to do so.”? 
Although a charity organization society would feel that 
it was defeating one of its chief objects,? namely, the 
education of the community in correct principles of relief, 
if it gained a monopoly of all charitable activity and so 
deprived people of the education which alone can come 
from a first-hand contact with the poor, there is an equally 
vital reason for not seeking such a monopoly, namely, 
the pressure of work which it would cause. The progress 
of knowledge in medicine, sanitation, biology has brought 
an increasing number of family problems to charity or- 
ganization societies and has meant a more extended treat- 
ment for many as well. This increasing burden which the 
new knowledge has temporarily at least brought with it 
would swamp any society which attempted to carry it 
all, and equally serious, it would mean before the final 
collapse, such a lowering of standards of work as to 
cause almost irreparable harm. The question of how 
far to limit intake to improve the quality of output is 
a most difficult one to answer, especially when one is con- 
fronted with the concrete situation. Certainly it is easy 
to understand why a society is tempted to take up all the 
work that comes to it. Without attempting to lay down 
a hard and fast rule on the burning issue of ‘“‘controlling 
intake,” one may well raise the question as to whether 
a society which does insist on maintaining high standards, 


*“Public Relief by a Private Agency,” The Survey, p. 228 (1918). 

*“The really fundamental and peculiar principle of the charity or- 
ganization society is to help the poor by the education of the public 
‘In wise and adequate charitable methods.” Samuel H. Bishop, “A New 
Movement in Charities,” Charities, Vol. VII, p. 447 (1901). 


I0O CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


no matter whatever else is involved, is not in the long 
run rendering the greatest social service to the community. 
Certainly the aim of a charity organization society is as 
much to establish standards of technique in relieving 
distress as to relieve the distress itself. 

A related question of importance is whether it is the 
function of a charity organization society to supply relief 
for cases under the care of specialized social agencies such 
as medical and children’s agencies. It is in harmony with 
the position already held as to the educational function 
of a charity organization society to hold that such is not 
its function, except in so far as these are definitely 
“C. O. 8.” problems for other reasons. It is the belief of 
at least one expert that the only ways out of the difficulty 
involved are for all specialized case workers to raise their 
own relief funds, or for charity organization workers along 
with others to work for the ‘‘extension and reorganiza- 
tion of public outdoor relief as a fund to be drawn upon 
by qualified agencies in connection with their treatment 
of their own clients.” 


III. To Arp IN ELIMINATING THE CAUSES OF POVERTY 


In social work with families the readjustments neces- 
sary are not all on the side of the individual out of 
adjustment. No amount of individual cleanliness can 
make a dark interior tenement a healthy abode. In other 
words, the individual frequently can not be adjusted to 
society unless social conditions are improved, made more 
just and humane. The individual’s lack of adjustment 
is in such cases not a consequence of personal weakness. 
Moreover, since in bad social conditions are to be found 
many of the ultimate causes of poverty, it follows that 
in its work of rehabilitation, charity must concern itself 

*Porter R. Lee, “Some Necessary Readjustments in C. O. S. Case 


Work,” an address delivered at a meeting of the American Association 
of Societies for Organizing Charity (May 12, 1915). 


FUNCTIONS OF A CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY IOI 


‘with social conditions as well. Therefore, in addition to 
the functions just described of relieving individual dis- 
tress and of educating the community in better methods 
of charity, a charity organization society has a still 
further obligation laid upon it, namely, to aid in the 
elimination of the causes of poverty.1. While not claim- 
ing a monopoly in this field, it must be apparent to every 
‘student of the history of the charity organization move- 
‘ment in this country that increasing emphasis has been 
placed by leaders in its ranks on removing the social 
causes of poverty at the same time that it has cared for 
the individual, not always, but often, the victim of those 
causes. In this sense it is the purpose of every charity 
organization society to work for its own extinction, or at 
least to work for the lessening of its work to that point 
where none who receive its aid could have avoided their 
present condition of need if both the individual and 
society had done all in his or its power respectively to 
make impossible the phenomenon of a human being 
unable to provide for his own support. — 
“When in its work for individual families _a charity _ 

organization society becomes aware of certain causes of 
poverty, it attempts either through special committees of 


*The work of any organization dealing with dependent families, says 
Mr. Frank Tucker, formerly General Agent of the New York Associa- 
tion for Improving the Condition of the Poor, ought to have two pur- 
poses: First, the elimination of causes of dependence by creating public 
sentiment, by opposing bad legislation and urging good, by special 
investigations intended to show up particular evils, by agitating for 
proper housing, health supervision, pure food, by developing municipal 
activities such as public baths, playgrounds, parks, etc.; second, the 
actual care and treatment of dependent families with a view to re- 
establishing their self-dependence or providing adequate relief to sup- 
plement their subnormal earning capacity when their condition should 
be made as nearly normal as possible in their own homes. 

This first phase should be kept constantly in mind by the charity 
worker, for when public or private meetings are held to discuss any 
one of these questions she should be ready to contribute from her 
knowledge of specific conditions and needs. 

_ Frank Tucker, “What a Charity Worker is Expected to Do,” Charities, 
Vol. VII, p. 30 (1901). 


102 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


its own or by stimulating the formation of new agencies, 


to remove these causes.”! It should be wnoted that this 
also is organizing charity, but about a community need 
as distinguished from that of a single family. A charity 


organization society may thus touch practically all the 


social problems of a modern community. 


CONSIDERATION OF METHODS oF AIDING IN THE ELIMI- 
NATION OF THE CAUSES OF POVERTY 


There is no room for dogmatism as to whether a charity 
organization society should itself ever undertake to attack 
the causes of poverty. Under certain circumstances the 
society may well decide to create special committees of 
its own? for this purpose, believing that “everything is 
germane to a charity organization society which is needed 
in the community and is not already well done,” * and 
that it is immaterial who undertakes the job so long as 
as the work gets done. Under other circumstances the 
stimulation of the formation of new agencies to attack the 
causes of poverty may be the part of wisdom, “‘to act as 
midwife, so to speak, for new social organisms.” # 
Though a final answer as to which is the better method 
is not possible, a consideration of certain factors which 


*Margaret G. ea “What Social Workers Should Know about 
their Own Communities,” p. 28 (1911 edition). 

*Among the societies of the large cities, that of New York City is 
the great exception in the line of doing community work as an integral 
part of its work. Even so the Department for the Improvement of 
Social Conditions of this society ‘has nothing to do with the care and 
treatment of families’—See The Survey, Feb. 4, 1911, p. 1406. The tend- 
ency in the New York Society has been to centralize for efficiency and to 
give concrete evidence of work done. The other large cities have fol- 
lowed in the main the Boston ideal of stimulating the formation of new 
agencies separate from the start, though including among their directors 
some of the same people as were in the Associated Charities. There are, 
nevertheless, remains all over the country of societies that have copied 
the structure of the New York C. O. S., even to the names and number 
of committees. Frequently but few of these committees are active. 

*Robert W. de Forest quoted by Alice L. Higgins. “The Summer 
School of Philanthropy,” Charities, Vol. IX, p. 47 (1902). 

*“Thirty-second Annual Report,’ Buffalo C. O. S., p. 56 (1909). 


FUNCTIONS OF A CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY 103 


should weigh heavily in deciding the question in individual 
Instances is of value. 

There is in the first place the question of thoroughness. 
Few will gainsay the contention that a charity organiza- 
tion society should delimit its field until it is attempting 

-to do no more work than it can do well. The efficiency 
of aC. O. 5S. rests on the quality of its social case work. 
‘Such work “calls for hard and persistent effort in lines 
‘that are easily slighted, and a society’s lapse from the 
standard is not vindicated by its assumption of other 
_functions.””? 
_ There is in the next place the question of expediency. 
| Often the society in its private councils may suggest this 
or that agitation by an individual member as being at that 
‘time and place more immediately practicable than action 
‘by the society. It may thus save the delay of waiting 
for such a vote, or it may seem more likely to bring 
‘results than a vote. Expediency alone is never a safe 
guide. A society may easily be tempted to undertake 
activities outside of its family work for financial or even 
publicity reasons. Children’s work, fresh air work has 
advertising value in that it can be understood by all. If, 
however, these activities are carried on at the expense of 
sound case work with the families under its care, the price 
paid is too large. This does not mean that charity or- 
ganization workers should lose sight of the fact that 
benevolent individuals have widened their interests since 
the beginning of the movement until they include prob- 
lems of health, industry, recreation and education. This 
shift of interest rather makes it all the more imperative 
that the charity organizationist make clear the vital 
relationship between social case work and movements 
for improving social conditions. There is furthermore 
the question of the possibility of pauperizing the philan- 
thropic spirit of a community. It is one thing for an 
Organization itself to carry the charitable burden of a 


_ *Charities, Vol. IX, p. 19 (1902). 


we 


104 CHARITY ORGANIZATION. MOVEMENT 


community; it is another and far more desirable achieve- 
ment to educate the community up to carrying its own 
burdens. 


THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY IN SMALLER 
COMMUNITIES 


The ‘‘cost of leadership” is a vital question in all small 
communities and makes impossible the minute subdivision 
of labor and specialization often found in communities of 
Over 100,000. Because of the limitations upon possible 
funds for social purposes and because of the need of 
obtaining the best possible grade of trained leadership, it 
is generally necessary for the charity organization society 
in a small community to work on the committee plan, 
thus undertaking several forms of service. Obviously 
there will be differences in the programs of societies in 
places of from ten to twenty thousand inhabitants, where 
often the secretary has to provide the only trained social 
leadership, and in cities of over one hundred thousand, 
where the charity organization society is only one of a 
group of strongly developed agencies working together 
possibly in a central council of social agencies.1 

Whenever opportunity comes to a charity organiza- 
tion society in a community of less than one hundred 
thousand population to bring about separate organiza- 
tions, advantage of it should be taken. But the responsi- 
bility of the society for seeing that the necessary com- 
munity program is carried out cannot be sidestepped, 
provided only and in all cases that at the bottom of the 
program is intensive family work.? In short, whatever 
activities are undertaken should be limited to the revela- 
tions of the day-to-day case work. In one smaller, com- 


*From address by Francis H. McLean, delivered at the sixth annual 
meeting of the American Association of Societies for Organizing Charity, 
June 6, 1917, at Pittsburgh. 

*Francis H. McLean, “Societies for Organizing Charity,” The Survey, 
Vol. XXVIII, p. 537 (1912). 


FUNCTIONS OF A CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY 105 


munity concentration has been carried so far because 


of the “cost of leadership” that no less than twenty- 
seven activities are being conducted by seven small 
societies. There is, however, in such cases a line beyond 
which concentration is accompanied by unusual dangers. 
When a combination of activities means that a family 
welfare agency must become engrossed in such admin- 


istrative details as buying food, coal, etc.; in short, 


in “running a plant,” as in the case of a day nursery, 
it is more than likely that the families under its care will 
suffer, and that the quality of its case work will deteri- 


orate. 


A CHARITY ORGANIZATION SoctIETy DEFINED 


We are now in a position to give a more adequate and 


- comprehensive definition of a charity organization society 


than has hitherto been possible. Because the functions 
of such a society are, as has been pointed out, several, and 
each complex, this is no easy task. To organize means, to 


use dictionary definitions, to bring together the interde- 


pendent parts into a living whole, to arrange the several 
parts for action or work. Organization as used therefore 
in connection with charity means bringing together into 
a living whole the social forces of a community, personal 
or institutional, to the end of accomplishing a given task 
by united effort. An individual can organize charity. 
When the needs of any considerable number of people 
come to notice constantly, then a larger unit—a society 
for organizing charity—is needed. Such societies are 
however “only devices which men have created in order 
to help them to be charitable more effectively.” + It should 
therefore never be overlooked that charity organization 
is a larger conception than merely a new type of social 
agency,—it is a new method of using the existing chari- 
table forces and resources of a community and may be 


*Porter R. Lee, “Treatment,” p. 11, pamphlet published by the Charity 
Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation (1910). 


106 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


used by an individual as well as by a social agency, and 
is used by many of the latter, who do not include charity 
organization in their titles.? 

Therefore, perhaps as good a definition of a charity 
organization society as can be given is: A device to aid 
all who will work together to find out, need by need, what 
is the best way out of a given difficulty, best for those on 
whom the need presses most heavily and best for the com- 
munity at large; and to aid in seeing each problem 
through to a final solution, including the removal of all 
preventable causes of poverty, either by measures the 
society launches itself or by measures it stimulates others 
to launch.” : 

It cannot be reiterated too often that it is impossible 
to copyright the name charity organization society, with 
the result that some societies which bear the title are such 
in name only. Charity organization as a principle is 
not automatic, and the title may cover a multitude of 
unrelated things. 


CENTRAL COUNCILS AND CHARITY ORGANIZATION 
SOCIETIES 


To thoughtful students of social problems it has become 
increasingly clear that every community presents a series 
of problems calling for solution. Logic demands first a 
survey or diagnosis of the field and then a plan of action, 
in which the next thing that is most needed to be done in 
that particular place is indicated. ‘“‘Not only is there 
a logical order of social development,” writes Miss 


* Children’s Aid Societies are increasingly practicing and preaching the 
methods of charity organization. See Proceedings, National Conference 
of Charities and Correction, 33rd session, pp. 95-106 (1906). 

*In this definition and the description which has preceded, the author 
has laid himself open to the charge of dogmatism. It has been his pur- 
pose in this section to picture those common features of various societies 
which distinguish them from any type of charitable agency precedent 
to the charity organization movement. While neither a “typical” nor 
ideal charity organization society may exist, for purpose of instricea 
and study, both concepts have value. 


FUNCTIONS OF A CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY 107 


‘Richmond, “but many organizations die because they are 


born out of due season. Overstimulation of any partic- 


ular social activity by a campaign of publicity which is 
‘not carefully followed by personal field work and by 


{ 


a series of delicate adjustments to local needs, increases 
this death rate. These separate social movements should, 


-as time goes on, and our social work becomes even more 


highly specialized than it is now, build up a social syn- 


thesis, a technique of inter-relations, involving much more - 
careful preparation of the ground for both our legislative 


and our field operations, and then a generous making way 


{ 


for one another, a hearty lending a hand to one another 
for the sake of the harvest.” * 


Realization of the fact that without a “city plan” for 


‘philanthropic activities, essential unity of purpose and 
“community planning can never be achieved, has led to the 


adoption in a number of cities of the plan of a “Central 
Council of Social Agencies.”’ Central councils are ‘‘dele- 
gate bodies representing the social agencies of the city, 


these agencies still maintaining independence of action 


in all fields and being bound together: by codperative 
rather than contractual relationship.”’ It is thus 
a “body composed of officials, delegates from all 
the social agencies of a city, armed with advisory and 
influencing powers only, and with no direct administra- 
tive sphere excepting as concerns its own internal af- 
fairs.’ * Such a council meets at regular intervals, re- 
views the general situation in the field of social work, 
its delegates plan together for improvements and more 
effective codperation, and when new lines of work are 
proposed decide among themselves in an amicable way 


_*Mary E. Richmond, “The Inter-Relation of Social Movements,” 
Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correction, 37th 
session, p. 218 (1910). 

*Francis H. McLean, “Central Councils and Community Planning,” 
The Survey, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 216 (1917). 

®Francis H. McLean, “Charity Organization Field Work,” pp. 25, 26, 
pamphlet published by the Russell Sage Ioundation (1910). 


108 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


which agency would be best fitted to undertake 
them. 

Mr. Francis H. McLean has well pointed out that 
charity organization societies cannot discharge their re- 
sponsibility for community planning “short of directly 
forwarding and furthering the community codperation 
which shall see its best fruition in consistent social chart- 
ing and programming.” ! In short, the charity organiza- 
tion movement must include the codrdination of all ef- 
forts for improving social conditions. ‘Until better ways 
are shown,” adds Mr. McLean, ‘‘the Central Council idea 
will be used largely though not exclusively. There are 
alternatives which may be adopted; 7 but we believe 
that the vision of the societies must not only mean the 
furtherance of good work, but the orderly, consistent 
furtherance of an adequate logical, social, movement, 
based upon facts, not fiction; in other words, backed by 
steady-going case work.” 

While the Central Council may largely be the result 
of efforts of the local charity organization society, the 
C. O. S. should neither ‘‘run” nor be “run by” the Cen- 
tral Council. Each of these conditions is fatal to the very 
objects for which the Council stands. The local society 
should have the same relationship to the Council that a 
chairman has to a case conference, in that it should stand 
ever ready with suggestions and be ready to initiate action 
when all others fail. Only thus can there be the develop- 
ment of community responsibility and true community 
planning. Since a charity organization society is a social 
agency like any other, such a policy will result in the 
minimum of friction and jealousy. It is just as important 
that the Central Council be absolutely divorced from 
any control of the internal affairs of the C. O. S. The 
work of a charity organization society demands the un- 


*Francis H. McLean, “Charity Organization Field Work,” pp. 25-26, 
pamphlet published by the Russell Sage Foundation (1910). 

oA example, ‘Financial Federations,” see pp. 170-171 of present 
volume. 


FUNCTIONS OF A CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY 109 


jivided thought and attention of those responsible for 
its policies and work. A body of delegates, each primarily 
mterested in the agency he represents, always makes a 
g0or body for administrative purposes. 

There remain to be discussed several special services 
‘elated to family social work, which are sometimes ren- 
dered by charity organization societies, but about which 
there is a question as to whether they are functions of 
such societies. These are the maintenance of an employ- 
nent bureau, the work of charities endorsement, and the 


yperation of a social service exchange. 
} 


[§ THE MAINTENANCE OF A FREE EMPLOYMENT BUREAU 
A FUNCTION OF A C. O. S.? 


Charity organization societies sometimes maintain 
ployment departments, although the view generally 
veld is that charity should never deal with the able-bodied 
memployed.1_ Unemployment is a problem that is in 
he main industrial. Responsibility for the provision of 
ree employment exchanges is one increasingly recognized 
yy state and federal governments. Accordingly there is 
| growing uniformity of belief that a charity organization 
ociety should do everything possible to secure relief by 
vork, for families who apply to it in the ordinary way 
ind are known to be in need of treatment, but should 
lever go beyond this. Sometimes societies establish 
vureaus of employment for the handicapped, but even 
tere the service is limited to their own families. 
\s in any “pre-collected” employment, there is dan- 
ser of trying to fit the man to the job rather than the 
a in which event the bureau becomes an accom- 


; 


nodation to the public often for “cheap labor” rather 
han a means to individual or family rehabilitation. 


*Amos G. Warner, “American Charities,” revised edition, p. 262 (1908). 


IIo CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


CHARITIES ENDORSEMENT 


In all cities there are organizations which have out- 
lived their usefulness, are duplicating the work of others, 
or are poorly managed.1 The importance, therefore, of 
the function of charities endorsement is obvious. The 
\significance of having this service efficiently rendered 1s 
lapparent when the vast sums of money and the amount 
lof energy expended by a community’s social agencie: 
/ are considered, not to mention the serious injury to the 
' poor and unfortunate that a carelessly managed social 
" agency may cause. 

The task of supervising a city’s charities is no small 
one. This fact, coupled with its importance, raises the 
question as to the machinery to be used to secure the 
best results. The methods now used in various places 
include endorsement by the local charity organization 
society, the local Chamber of Commerce or Board of 
Trade, a municipal charities commission, a Central Coun- 
cil of Social Agencies and a joint committee representing 
the local commercial bodies and the social agencies. Ma- 
chinery that may work successfully in one place may not 
in another. Much depends on the personnel and standing 
in the community of the organization to which the work is 
entrusted. Much also depends on one’s conception of the 
purpose of charities « endorsement. To some it may meal 
merely an exposure of ‘‘unworthy charities,’ meaning 
thereby those either actually fraudulent or run on finan- 
cially unsound though well intentioned lines. To others it 
means not merely a prevention of a duplication of work 
but also an attempt to solve the problem of the relation- 
ship between the programs of different social agencies and 


*The Inquiry Department of the United Charities of Chicago had on 
file in 1910 records concerning 1,414 institutions, agencies, schemes and 
individual solicitors that had operated in Chicago during the preceding 
nine years; 14.5 per cent of these were rated “very good”; 22.9 per cent 
“good”; 14.2 per cent “doubtful”; 25.6 per cent “bad”; 22.4 per cent 
not rated because of incomplete information. a 


re | 
‘@ 
‘7 
ee 
ee 


FUNCTIONS OF A CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY III 


the maintenance of standards of efficiency. It thus in- 
7olves constructive social planning as well as protection of 
‘he benevolently inclined. 

_ The author does not wish to dogmatize in answer to 
his question, since the data on which to pass judgment 
ire so meagre. He must content himself by presenting 
‘he rival claims made respectively on behalf of having 
sharitable and non-charitable organizations render the 
service. | 

_ Considering the latter first, it is urged that it is inex- 
yedient for a society seeking to increase cooperation in 
{, community to assume the role of a self-appointed 
udge.t A local chamber of commerce or board of trade 
$ a neutral body and is not a judge in its own behalf. 
Moreover, it is urged that it represents the money-giving 
yublic, and so has a legitimate interest if not duty to keep 
informed of the management of the city’s philanthropies. 
‘nally it is maintained that the endorsement of private 
tharities by commercial bodies will increase the interest 
if business men generally in the social agencies of their 
community. 

On the other hand, the question has been raised by 
hose opposed to turning the function of charities en- 
lorsement over to commercial organizations, as to the 
ffect upon the spirit and content of social work of “the 
jusiness man in charity.” What, they ask, will be the 
Onsequences in the course of a decade of the domination 
if the social agencies of a city by a local body of mer- 
hants and manufacturers, for the function of charities en- 
Orsement carries with it the power to force on social 
gencies standards of operation and administration. It 
,3 pointed out that systems of audits and accounts appro- 
riate for ascertaining the administrative efficiency of 
hilanthropic agencies differ quite strikingly from the 
/mancial accounts and audit found in business concerns 











| 


| *In at least one large city this was the reason which led to a transfer 
‘f the work from the leading charitable society to the leading com- 
lercial organization. 


I12 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


operated for profit. It should not be overlooked, they 
urge, that a group of men whose training has been ir 
business may secure an immediately economical admin: 
istration rather than an efficient administration of th¢ 
kind that spells economy in the long run. “The test: 
that” commercial agencies “‘are intelligent enough to ap: 
ply,” it is further pointed out, “are elementary; a charitj 
might meet them all and still be doing a great harm to the 
poor. It would seem best, therefore, to confine their work 
to its legitimate field of reporting upon business enter- 
prises, and to seek advice about charitable undertakings 
from charitable experts who are known to be both cour: 
ageous and fair-minded.” The wisdom of centraliza- 
tion of power in social work raises many serious ques: 
tions. Finally it is maintained that there is no more 
reason for the contributors to a city’s charities being clas: 
sified on the basis of membership in a certain commercia 
body than there is in their being classified as members 0! 
one denomination or another, or of one political party o1 
another and on that classification being determiners 
of the standards of the social work of the com 
munity. | 

To meet the objections of having the work of charities 
endorsement in the hands of either a business organiza: 
tion or of one of the social agencies of the city, certair 
cities, as in Chicago, have turned to a non-charitable ot: 
ganization, which, however, is not strictly commercial 
the Chicago Association of Commerce, “including not 
only business men but the leading lawyers, ministers anc 
physicians” of the city. Moreover, it is urged that where 
the charities endorsement work of a community is rea 
dered by non-charitable organizations, there is nothing tc 
prevent the creation of an advisory council composed oi 
persons having an intimate knowledge of social work tc 
assist such a body. 


\ te E. Richmond, “The Good Neighbor,” pp. 134-135 (1908). 





FUNCTIONS OF A CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY I13 


_ SHOULD THE C. O. S. MANAGE THE SOCIAL SERVICE 
EXCHANGE? 


A social service exchange is a clearing house for “‘iden- 
ifying information only” concerning all persons aided by 
hose social agencies of a community who register in it. 
deally every agency dealing with family problems should 
‘onsider its use an integral part of its work. In such a 
‘ase the value of the exchange to all using it is greatly 
ncreased, and it becomes in truth a community activity. 
\ social service exchange cannot increase its use by the 
ocial agencies of a community nor perform its maximum 
ervice in improving the quality of the case work of the 
gencies already using it, “unless the person who is in 
harge knows what good case work i is, and believes that 
he Exchange can be so conducted as to improve it.” } 
_ Who then should manage the Exchange—the charity 
enization society, some other agency, or the societies 
ointly? There is good authority for saying that the 
Confidential Exchange is more likely to succeed if di- 
ectly controlled by one agency, and that the one having 
ae deepest enthusiasm for intensive work with families.” 2 
Since in most communities,” writes Miss Byington, ‘this 
; or should be the charity organization society, it is, as a 
ule, the one that should conduct the Exchange.” ? Ex- 
erience, however, is accumulating that may favor the 
Itimate independence of the social service exchange as a 
cial agency or at least its joint control by several agen- 
‘ies. 
| F. Byington, “The Confidential Exchange,” Publication 
0. 28, Charity Organizafion Department of the Russell Sage Founda- 
(on, p. 9 (1912). 

To-day the term “Social Service Exchange” is used to encour- 
re its use by agencies whose activities are often regarded public 
rvices or at least semi- philanthropic to which the traditional odium 
relief does not attach. It is felt the term confidential smacks of 
mfirmed dependence. It is held wise, whatever the name of the ex- 


lange, to limit it to confidential information only because of the erro- 
sous common feeling that relief involves a kind of personal degradation. 
Ibid ; 


Ibid. 





CHAPTER 


THE PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY 
ORGANIZATION 


CHARITY organization societies use the “case method” 
_of. work. Social case work is the art of doing ¢ different: 





“things for different individuals in ‘such a way that the 
welfare of the individual and of society are I harmonized 
as nearly as is humanly possible. In short, the case 
work method is the personality-by-personality method. 
To classify human beings is foreign to its spirit. Its cor- 
rollary, individualization of treatment, means the work- 
ing out of a “definite plan for meeting the precise diffi- 
culties to be overcome” followed by the “long continued 
personal oversight which such a plan involves.” * The 
plan may require the giving of material relief but it may 
as often be the securing of right medical attention, the 
encouragement of friendship, assistance by industrial 
training or instruction in how to use the machinery of 
our social life which previously had contributed little 
of value to the individual because of some lack of ad- 
justment. It is essential above all that there be a far- 


sighted plan adjusted in all details to the needs of the 


— a serena tment 


_case. ‘The contrast between ‘planned a: and | planless charity 


_is the real contrast between good and bad charity. F or, 
as has well been pointed out, “to put one family beyond 
the need of charity i is seis useful than to tide twenty over 
into next week’s misery.” ) 

“Few if any individuals are entirely without family ties 
of one kind or another. Because of the social gain of 


1B, T. Devine, “Relief and Care of the Poor in Their Hone Ca + : 
ties Review, Vol. X, p. 270 (1900). Bi 


114 










" 
| 
PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION II5 


keeping such ties intact, and where necessary, of strength- 
jning them if possible, all planning i in social case \ work is 
n last_analysis family planning. “It is,” writes Dr. 
Devine, ‘‘a deceptive philosophy that turns the back upon 
jarents as hopeless and proposes to save the children. We 
tannot save children separately. We must reach and save 
the family as a whole, and we must do what we do in un- 
jisguised and unaffected friendship for the family as a 
vhole. i 

The social case worker, like the physician, never __ 
yasses moral judgr judgment on a on a patient. Once in a while 
one still hears the phrase “the worthy poor,” or “the 
mworthy poor,” but where found it marks the user as one 
anacquainted with the spirit of modern social work, 
which has long since outgrown it. Unlike the specialist 
n the medical field, the charity organization worker 
‘laims the whole field of dependence as his own. His or 
ier work stops short at nothing that will aid in the re- 
iabilitation of the individual or family in question. 

It has already been pointed out that whatever is done. 
or an individual in need must be done in such a way 
hat the welfare of welfare of society is considered as well as the 
jelfare of the individual: The family case worker 
hould never weaken the economic and social forces that 
ake for independence. In short, case work must not 


nly“help the individual to live his life fully,” but must 
help him in such a way as not to depress the independent 


fforts being made by other members of his community.” ? 















_7E. T. Devine, “The Practice of Charity,” p. 71 (1901). 
| Mary Willcox Glenn, “Case Work,” The Survey, Vol. XXIX, p. 430 
| 913). 

“Sometimes, helping the individual may be objectionable, because it 
,ill injure other people. For instance, it is said that one reason of the 
sry low wages of working women ,in Paris, which makes it impossible 
‘fF any woman to earn a living there by needlework is the work that 
done in institutions for poor women and sold at low rates—that is, 
ose good people who have charge of institutions for poor women are 

' possessed with a desire to maintain their institution and to teach 
‘e few women they have in them, that they injure thousands of working 
omen for the sake of a few hundred they have directly under their 


7 


ui CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 
The technique. of social case work falls naturally intc 
two main divisions: Social Diagnosis and Social Treat: 
ment. Considerable space is given to a statement of thé 
principles and methods of charity organization, as th¢ 
technique of work with families as contrasted with work 
with neighborhoods, with groups of individuals, or with 
communities, constitutes in the writer’s opinion the great- 
est contribution of the charity organization movement t¢ 
social progress. 1 While the technique of family case work 
constitutes what is known as the recognized charity or- 
ganization procedure, as previously pointed out, the 
methods are applicable with slight modification to the 
work of children’s aid societies, societies to protect chil- 
dren from cruelty, probation departments, public relief 
offices, hospital social service bureaus, agencies for fam- 
ily relief, for home and school visiting, for mental hy- 
giene work and other like organizations. 
The necessity for a thorough mastery of the principles 
and methods of social case work cannot be urged toc 
strongly. A whole life may be affected for weal or woe 
by a single decision in the plan of treatment. ‘For any 
given family there is only one best possible combination” 
of charitable resources to be utilized; “there are a dozen 
second-bests.”’ 2 
In the explanation of the principles and methods ol 
charity organization which follows, the writer has in mind 
what these principles and methods mean to the family) 





eyes, and this lowering of wages is one of the most disastrous effects of) 
any extended relief system.” Mrs. J. S. Lowell, Charities Review, Vol) 
V, p. 390 (1896). | 

*It would be inaccurate to state that the C. O. S. movement alone! 
has been responsible for the development of good “case work.” Thus} 
for example, one might cite the contribution of the Boston Children’s! 
Aid Society under the able direction of Mr. C. W. Birtwell. It i; 
fair to state, however, that no other movement in the United States} 
has done more or as much to develop the principles and technique oj 
work with individuals and families as the charity organization move-| 
ment. Hy 
7M. E. Richmond, “Some Methods of Charitable Coiperation’ 
Charities, Vol. VII, p. 114 (1901). 


PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION I1I7 


‘case worker of to-day.t Such terms as investigation, 
cooperation, and adequate relief have a richer content 
for the modern social worker than they had for his 
predecessor of forty years ago. 


SOCIAL DIAGNOSIS 


_I gave a beggar from my little store 
Of well-earned gold. He spent the shining ore 
And came again and yet again,’still cold and hungry as 
before. 
_I gave a thought, and through that thought of mine 
' He found himself, the man, supreme, divine! 
_ Fed, clothed, and crowned with blessings manifold, 
_ And now he begs no more. 
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 


Social diagnosis is the attempt to arrive at as exact 
a definition as possible of the social situation and per- 
sonality of a given client. The gathering of evidence, 
or investigation, begins the process, the critical examina- 
tion and comparison of evidence follows, and last come 
its interpretation and the definition of the social diffi- 
culty.”* The method of investigation is to open one’s 
eyes to see, that of diagnosis to shut them to think. Where 
one word must describe the whole process, diagnosis is a 
better word than investigation, though in strict use the 
former belongs to the end of the process. 

Social diagnosis is in short to the case worker what 
medical diagnosis is to the physician. Like disease, pov- 
erty is due to specific causes, and like disease though 


0 tS ss a_i ieee atheetieteteetnetend Eitan 
symptoms are similar, the causes may be widely Saletan 


*This should not be taken to imply that the accompanying expla- 
nation of principles applies universally to-day. Standards of work 
in| some places still lag far behind. 

7M. E. Richmond, “Social Diagnosis,’ p. 62 (1917). The pub- 
lication of this monumental work makes less necessary as detailed a 
statement of the meaning of social diagnosis as would otherwise be in 
order. 


118 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


cine is based on a knowledge of causes operating in the 
case in question, any adequate plan of treatment of an 
individual or family which has failed to be self-supporting 
must be based on a knowledge of the Causes operating to 
not, or, as is ore ‘the case, both personal and social, 
common sense backed by experience has demonstrates 
that _all treatment should be preceded by a knowledge of 
_the essential facts involved... The end of social diagnosis 
is to ascertain the best possible thing to be done under a 
given combination of circumstances. Its purpose is to 
expedite, not cause procrastination in treatment, of which 


in truth it is a part. 


SociAL INVESTIGATION 
_Investigation, the first step in social diagnosis, is 


an attempt to find out the causes behind the immediate 
situation in which a maladjusted family finds itself, in 
order to furnish the basis upon which to work systematic- 
ally and persistently for the improvement of the condi- 
tion of the family. Investigation means not only visits to 
the home but visits to relatives, employers, school teach- 
ers, ministers, friends, and others who have viewed the 
family from different vantage grounds. “The visits are 
made not only to gather information, but to get sugges- 
tions for, and help in carrying out a plan for better- 
ment.” } 

Experience has shown time and again that thor- 
ough investigation is no easy task. Not only valuable but 
absolutely essential sources of information * are far more 


*«What Is Organized Charity?” pp. 4 and 5, pamphlet published by ; 
The Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation — 
(1910). f 

* The following give some idea of the variety of the sources of inform ; 
tion that may be used: Church connections, either clergymen, fellow 
church members, Sunday-school teachers; landlords, both former at 
present; lawyers, medical agencies, including physicians, dentists, ho ’ 


I 


[s 


PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION I 19 


numerous and varied than the lay public would imagine 
and the methodology to be used in working these mines 
of information has a technique of its own.! Investiga- 
tions made in early days are often seen later to be 
inadequate or unnecessarily elaborate. It is not at all 
surprising then, that investigations made by the charity 
Organization societies as revealed on the old record 
cards, seem in the light of what has been learned by their 
blunders ‘“‘childishly crude.”* Charity organization 
workers are to-day rediscovering the value of scientific 
investigation. To be competent witnesses of actual facts 
is no small contribution to social progress. The present 


emphasis on thorough investigation is but natural in the 


pitals and sanatoria, dispensaries, nurses, midwives, social service de- 


‘partments; neighborhood references, including former and present neigh- 
bors and former and present tradesmen; pawnbrokers; private social 
agencies, including C. O. S. or Associated Charities, foreign relief so- 


cieties, other relief societies, home for adults, homes for children, 
Children’s Aid Societies, S. P. C. C. or Humane Societies, day nurseries, 
settlements; public officials, including almshouses, charities depart- 
ment, health departments, court departments, juvenile probation, 


adult probation, municipal lodging houses, prison or reformatory, U. S. 


consuls, foreign consuls; public records, including records of birth, 


‘baptism, death, contagious disease, marriage, divorce or legal separa- 


tion, property, guardianship, or insurance; relatives; school officials, 
including teachers, truant officers, medical inspectors and nurses, school 
visitors, fellow pupils; social, trade and benefst societies, including 
trade unions, fellow workmen, political clubs, benefit societies, and 
other clubs. 

*Much of the work of the Charity Organization Department of 
the Russell Sage Foundation, under the direction of Miss Mary E. 
Richmond, consists of research, looking to the development of a scien- 
tific technique for the social case worker. The noteworthy contribution 
to this field, made by the director of the above mentioned department 
in the Kennedy lectures of The New York School of Philanthropy for 
1913-1914 entitled “First Steps in Social Case Work,” after amplification 
was published under the title “Social Diagnosis,” already mentioned. 

*Mary E. Richmond, ‘What is Charity Organization,” Charities Re- 
view, Vol. IX, p. 496 (1900). Miss Zilpha Smith, one of the pioneers 
in the work of the Associated Charities of Boston and long its General 
Secretary, speaking in conversation with the writer, of Oscar McCulloch’s 
report on Associated Charities at the National Conference of Charities 
and Correction of 1880, said that admirable though it was, the report 
shows a great difference in our early thought from now. It shows that 
much was later gained by a sympathetic understanding’of the poor and 
- surroundings growing out of the use of the very methods stated 

erein. 


I20 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


light of the rapid strides that biology, psychology and 
the social sciences have been making in the past two 
decades. Stressing the social causes of poverty carries 
with it an added interest in searching them out through 
investigation. The situation is paralleled in the medical 
profession, the analogy between which and social work is 
strikingly complete. A well-known doctor? is reported 
as saying that twenty years ago a dispensary was not 
justified in spending much over ten minutes for diagnosis 
on the average case. ‘The progress of therapeutics had 
not progressed far enough to warrant longer time. To- 
day because of the advance in the field of therapeutics, 
an hour may be the best investment for the ultimate sake 
of economy of time. Moreover, it may be an absolute 
necessity in the light of the advance made in the field of 
diagnosis with its blood tests and the like. The same 
change has taken place in the field of work. 

It is quite within truth to say that social diagnosis of the 
kind which ceases being solely and primarily for the pur- 
pose of thwarting the expectations of impostors and which 
does more, not only determining that help should be 
given but also revealing from what sources such help 
should come and how agencies may be brought into defi- 
nite and hearty codperation in carrying out the neces- 
sary treatment, is something whose possibilities have only 
been gradually unfolded.” 


*Dr. Charles Emerson. 

7 For those who wish to gain a more complete knowledge of the subject 
of investigation, the following readings are suggested: 

M. E. Richmond, “Social Diagnosis (1917). 

C. Birtwell, “Investigation,” Charities Review, Jan., 1895. 

M. F. Byington, “The Confidential Exchange,” Russell Sage Founda- 
tion Pamphlet (1917). 

E. T. Devine, “The Practice of Charity (1901). 

Amelia Sears, “The Charity Visitor,’ New and Revised Edition (1917). 

Helen Bosanquet, “Standard of Life” (1898), Chapter on “An Apology 
for False Statements.” 

Porter R. Lee, “Social Work with Families and Individuals,” Pamphlet 
No. I, Studies in Social Work, issued by The New York School of 
Philanthropy (10915). 


PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 121 


THE WorkK TEST 


A work test is a device sometimes used to determine 


in certain cases where other means are impossible, 


whether a given individual is “work-shy” or not. In 
brief it is an aid in diagnosis. It most often assumes the 


form of a woodyard or a stone quarry. The disastrous 
‘results to good case work which the abuse of these 
agencies entails, entitles a discussion of the work test, 
brief though it must necessarily be, to a place in any 
presentation of the methods and principles of charity 


% 


organization. 


It should be borne in mind in the first place that a work 


test is neither a substitute for investigation nor a sub- 


stitute for relief. When it becomes either, it reveals an 


ignorance of the meaning of social case work. 

If a work test is to have any value it must com- 
bine three features: First, it must be simple so that no 
one can pretend to lack the skill to do it. Second, it must 


be reasonably severe, and yet not too severe for the or- 


dinary strength. Third, it must be for “a fair wage and 
under conditions which do not tend to destroy a man’s 
self-respect.”’ ‘‘ ‘Doles of work’ for ‘doles of pay’ does not 
fool men.” 1 These features may mean that a society 
should have several types of tests. It should be possible 
for a society to pay “‘a fair wage” and offer the test ‘under 


conditions that do not tend to destroy a man’s self- 


respect” if the work test is made what its name implies, 
a test, and not a substitute for regular employment. As 
a test it is temporary and, therefore, does not involve the 
expense incident to “made work.” 


*William H. Mathews, “Wages from Relief Funds,” The Survey, 
Vol. XXXIV, p. 246 (1915). 


122 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


CaAsE RECORDS 


It is essential to keep an accurate record of the results 
of an investigation. It is also equally necessary to record 
the individual steps in treatment, taken in the light of 
the social diagnosis made. As the purpose of recording 
information concerning a family is to make possible the 
most expeditious and most effective care of the family in 
question, much time has been spent in planning a form of 
record which should effectively arrange all the informa- 
tion gained in such a way as to make it easy for workers 
and case conferences to get at all essential facts, in order 
intelligently to find a way out of the difficulty at hand. 

In her suggestive book, ‘““The Charity Visitor,’ Miss 
Sears makes the point that there are three uses to which 
the record may be put: 


“rt. To inform all subsequent workers of the facts 
gleaned concerning this family; 

“2. To inform the public, through annual reports, of 
the work progressing in the society, thus making possible 
further work through the interest aroused; 

“3. To accumulate data concerning poverty, disease, 
social exploitation and industrial abuse—data that may 
prove effective in securing a wider knowledge and hence 
the amelioration of the conditions, social, industrial and 
economic, that produce dependency.” * 


Covering respectively the third and second by-product 
of record making just listed, another student of the sub- 
ject writes: The idea of keeping case records also in- 
cludes “the expectation that presently these cases will 
furnish the body of facts which can show with more 
detail than can now be known the causes of poverty and 
of dependence. Likewise these case facts should serve 
to prove at once to doubters the justice of the pretension 


*Amelia Sears, “The Charity Visitor,’ New and Revised Edition. 
D./39 (1927), " 


pein > 


PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 123 


‘that patient personal care, coupled with adequate material 

aid, can raise families out of dependence rather than 
‘merely keep them alive, as was done by impulsive giving 
or official relief.” ' 

Certain it is, usefulness of case records is to be meas- 
ured by their value (1) to the individual; (2) to the so- 
ciety keeping them, as a basis for reports to its bene- 
factors and to the community of its stewardship; (3) to 
‘the community in arousing effort for the common wel- 
fare.” 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE REGISTRATION BUREAU 


As the new societies were anxious to avoid the dupli- 
cation of relief that so generally obtained and in some 
‘communities is still too prevalent, they were equally de- 
sirous of securing a registration of cases in which all 
societies working with the poor should take part. Ac- 
cordingly one of the earliest methods of cooperation in- 
troduced by charity organization societies was a system 
of recording the charitable relief of various agencies at a 
central office, and of forwarding to these agencies in re- 
turn all information received that was likely to be of 
service to them. ‘The device was simply an adaptation 
to charity needs of the clearing house system. On 
separate cards were entered the names of 


(1) all applying for or receiving official outdoor aid; 

(2) all persons receiving aid in the institutions (in- 
door aid). These included the dispensaries, the hospital, 
the almshouse, etc.: 


* Jessica B. Peixotto, “Reconciling Public and Private Relief,” Second 
Annual Report of the Municipal Charities Commission, City of Los 
_Angeles, Cal., p. 29 (1915). 

*Rose J. McHugh, “The Meaning and Limitations of Records in 
Relief Work.” A paper read at the fourth biennial meeting of the 
National Conference of Catholic Charities, held in Washington, D. C, 
_ September 17-20, 1916. See also Ada E. Sheffield, “Social Case History, 
‘its Construction and Content” (1920). 


I24 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


(3) all persons relieved by associations, societies, 
guilds, churches or individuals, so far as they cooperate; 

(4) all persons relieved by private charities, so far as 
can be ascertained; 

(5) all persons in penal and reformatory institutions, 
and passing through the courts. 


The cards about one family were brought together, 
each card representing the society or person reporting, 
and placed in an alphabetisal file. Sueh a device served as 
a center into which was .gathered informatidr. about par- 
ticular families in ordep that it might be placed instggtly 
at the service of any society or individual aera and 
about to take action. Such a registration bureau revealed 
duplication, overlapping of relief, and fraud. This how- 
ever was but the smallest part of the service whi ‘a i 
rendered. It saved both the stamina of families and thi 
money of the charitably disposed, but its service to the 
charitable was not so great as its protection to the 
poor. 

From the day when the Boston Associated Charities 
took over as a normal part of its work a Registration 
Bureau already launched a few years previous by some 
volunteer relief workers, and began to collect from the 
various charitable societies of the city records of their 
“cases” and to register them, until 1906, the general plan 
of registration was the same wherever used.” During this 
time the Registration Bureau continued to be used chiefly 
by relief-giving societies. Gradually more agencies were 
being organized in the community whose services to the 
poor did not include the giving of relief. At first these 
agencies usually saw no reason why they should register. 
Finally it “became increasingly evident that their work 


*See “What is Organized Charity?” a pamphlet published by the 
Russell Sage Foundation, p. 13. 

* Boston began with reports merely of groceries, coal or shoes given. 
When the Associated Charities took over the work, it was found that 
information as to character, earnings, etc., was just as important as 
notices of relief. 


PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 125 


with a given family would be unintelligent and super- 


ficial if they did not know whether others had dealt or 


were dealing with it.”+ A growing sense of responsi- 
bility for a case undertaken, fostered by the form of 


record used, and the growing popular use of the tele- 
phone with the increasing willingness to use it for con- 
fidential matters were big factors making for a more gen- 


eral use of the Registration Bureau. 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
THE SOCIAL SERVICE EXCHANGE 


Because it was felt by some of the agencies whom it 
was believed most desirable to encourage in registering 


their cases, that a recording of the life histories of their 
cases would be a violation of strict confidence, and because 


formation 


the Registration Bureaus where found, realized that the 
copies of their records were not always up to date and 
did not often give a full picture of the family, the plan 
was devised of registering at the bureau “identifying in- 
” 2 only and referring directly to an agency al- 
ready interested in a case, any one inquiring about the 
Case in question. Thus the Registration Bureau of the 
earlier days of the movement has evolved into the 
Social Service Exchange and, to use technical terms, the 
social agencies of various communities no longer register 
their cases with the Charity Organization Society but 
“Inquire of the Exchange” about all their new cases.* 


1Margaret F. Byington, “The Confidential Exchange,” p. 5 (1912). 

*Such includes the names, ages and occupations of the members of 
the family group, names and addresses of relatives, and the names of 
agencies interested, with the date on which each inquired. It does not 


Include any facts about family history or treatment. 


} 
| 


*It would be erroneous to leave the impression that every com- 
munity, even those with charity organization societies, has to-day its 
social service exchange. The idea originating in Boston in 1906, 
has, however, spread to a number of large cities, including New York, 
Philadelphia, Chicago and Cleveland. Such exchanges are not always 
conducted by the local charity organization societies but may be run 


_by a committee representing the agencies dealing with needy families 


‘and dependent children or as an independent social agency. 


126 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


Such an Exchange is as impersonal as a catalogue or 
city directory. The advantages of the new plan of 
registering are obvious, and offset its chief weakness of 
not providing for a notice to one agency of the reéntry 
into a case of another agency which had earlier dropped 
it. It has been found desirable at certain stages of de- 
velopment in a city trying the new plan, still to use 
certain of the methods of the old plan in order to get 
results. 

The services of an Exchange are many and impor- 
tant. In the first place its universal use by all of the 
social agencies of a city would make unnecessary the 
representative of one organization asking questions that 
have already been answered to other social workers and 
digging up facts that have already been unearthed. Sec- 
ondly, the Exchange provides a means of letting others 
know that an individual, a church, or another agency in- 
terested in a particular family may wish no interference.' 
Thirdly, it affords a means where several agencies are 
working with one family, to avoid the “bewildered and 
often dazed condition of mind” of those to whom they 
minister, ‘“‘brought about by conflicting advice and variant 
plans; the uncertainty, the worry, the lack of confidence, 
the clever turning of one agency’s attitude as a fence 
against another’s,” the blocking of wise measures, [and] 
the not infrequent suffering . . .”% It should be pointed 


*The most usual objection raised against the central registration 
bureau is that it violates the privacy of the dependent family by making 
its condition public property. On the contrary, registration safeguards 
privacy as noted above. “Index cards,” writes the Assistant Secretary 
of the Buffalo Charity Organization Society, “are not public; no one 
but a confidential employee of the bureau is allowed to handle them, 
and with thousands on file a single card loses all individuality or promi- 
nence. Information is not given indiscriminately, especially over the 
telephone, but only to accredited inquirers.” Anna B. Fox, ‘Focus- 
sing the Lines of Social Contact,” The Survey, Vol. XXV, p. 1036 (1911). 

*When as in some cities there are a thousand churches and when 
these give relief without first communicating with each other through 
an Exchange, they tempt the poor to deceive. 

* Anna B. Fox, “Focussing the Lines of Social Contact,” The Survey, 
Vol. XXV, p. 1036 (1911). 


! 
} 
} 
i) 
3 


PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 127 


‘out in this connection that social work has an ethical code 
no less than medicine, and for much the same reason. 
The ethics of social work forbids one social agency in- 
terfering in the work of another agency. If the medical 
profession were to abandon this code of ethics, and sev- 
eral doctors paying no attention to the others, were to 
attempt to treat a patient at the same time, it is safe to 
predict what would happen. 

_ Fourthly, the Exchange may become an effective agent 
for social reform. Its secondary registration on a street 
index for identification makes it possible so to map out the 
‘city that one can readily answer the question as to which 
neighborhoods of a city are most in need of improvement. 
‘As Miss Fox writes: “It would be difficult to name a single 
social movement that would not be aided by the data 
accumulated at a central bureau. The street directory 
there would show that certain localities of special interest 
to housing reformers, for instance, are likewise conspicu- 
ous in the registration from medical agencies, playground 
boards, and juvenile correctional institutions. The stu- 
dent of immigration or of racial groups would find there 
‘abundant material for study. Another benefit which 
would follow would be the inauguration of a more uni- 
form and complete system of statistics by the organiza- 
tions and institutions represented—one bearing upon the 
facts social investigators wish to find and rarely can.” } 
_ It cannot be emphasized too strongly that the possibili- 
‘ties of the Social Service Exchange becoming an effective 
engine for social codperation ? are in inverse ratio to its 
‘being viewed as a mere business device which can be run 
by clerks whose employers so regard it. It must be under 
‘the direction of those who thoroughly understand social 
‘case work. Reports, telephone messages, letters, personal 


*Anna B. Fox, “Focussing the Lines of Social Contact,” The Survey, 
Vol. XXV, p. 1037 (1911). 

* A leaflet issued in 1913 by the Social Service Exchange of New York 
forcibly illustrates this last point in showing that 30,000 families, in- 
cluding approximately 135,000 individuals, would in all probability be 
‘reported to the exchange during that year. 





A A Te 


ee 


128 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


interviews, may all be merely expeditiously despatched, 
with the sole purpose in view of a more or less accurate 
checking up of lists. What is needed is something equally 
prompt, but far more intelligent and humane. ‘We are 
not satisfied,” says the Boston registrar, “unless those 
who begin to use the exchange are induced to seek closer 
relations and a better understanding with other groups 
of workers in other lines of social work.” ‘This is 
achieved,” writes Miss Richmond, “by tactful suggestion, 
by watching avoidance of ground for misunderstanding, 
and by steady though gentle pressure towards the real 
ends in view. The ability to organize such an enterprise 
demands not so much clerical dexterity as social states- 
manship.” ? 


COOPERATION 


Neither social diagnosis nor social case treatment_can 
proceed far without_a community spirit of codperation. 
Of necessity, cooperation has been the watchword of 
the charity organization movement. since the beginning. 
While in the early days cooperation meant hardiy more 
than mere good fellowship among social agencies and a 
possible agreeing not to overlap in the matter of relief 
giving, it has steadily acquired greater significance, until 
to-day it spells not only active ‘team work” among social 
agencies based on the idea of function, but also a work- 
ing principle applicable to every act of the social worker. 
Cooperation in the pioneer days was desirable; to-day the 
division of labor in social work has proceeded so far that 
it is now a matter of life and death. The motto of the 





*M. E. Richmond, “The Confidential Exchange,” The Survey, Vol. 
XXV, p. 998 (IgII). 

For an excellent account of the development of the Social Service or 
Confidential Exchange see pamphlet, “The Confidential Exchange,” by 
Margaret F. Byington, published by the Charity Organization Depart- 
ment, Russell Sage Foundation (1912). 


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130 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


New York society, “‘United, an army; divided, a mob,” is 
appropriate for every charity organization society. 

On the official side, codperation means “that each of 
the cooperating individuals or societies shall supplement 
the efforts of the others contributing a part of the money 
or work needed; or it may mean that they will agree to a 
division of work, each leaving to the other a part for 
which its facilities are adapted; or it may mean a division 
of the cases to be dealt with, each agreeing to leave en- 
tirely to the other certain classes of individuals or fam- 
ilies whose needs are to be studied and adequately met by 
the agency to which they are assigned.” 4 

“Cooperation among charities, like all relationships,” 
writes Porter R. Lee, ‘‘is a process of give and take. As 
long as social work is in a tentative stage, there will be 
different standards in different agencies, different ways 
of meeting similar problems. The response of other or- 
ganizations for codperation will not always be what is 
expected. Demands upon an organization may exceed its 
financial resources or its legal powers. Its experience, 
with the full force of which other agencies are unfamiliar, 
may dictate policies which at first sight seem unreason- 
able. One cannot expect others, however, to concede the 
validity of his experience in his own field unless he makes 
a similar concession to them. Those who attempt to co- 
operate with other agencies, as all social workers must, 
may well consider in this connection those factors which 
make any human relationship run smoothly and with sat- 
isfaction to those concerned.” * Certainly a big step is 
taken in any community toward social cooperation when 
each agency is on the lookout to make its cooperation 
with other agencies better than is asked. | 

Cooperation on the official side, as it concerns the rela~ 

*E. T. Devine, “Principles of Relief,’ p. 347 (1905). 

* Porter R. Lee, “Social Work with Families and Individuals,” Studies 


im Social Work, No. 1, issued by The New York School of Philanthropy, 
Ppp. 14-15. 


.o 


PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 131 


‘tions of social agencies, is still very important, but co- 
operation has more than an official side. It is also such 
a “habit of mind” as leads a worker to see, in the dis- 
charge of his particular duties, all those conditions which 
need to be remedied, and then if they do not fall within 
his or her particular province, to interest in them those 
other social agencies to which they more directly belong. 
‘The attitude of the worker with this conception of co- 
operation is “that of being in turn a representative of 
the various agencies, and of bringing to the family the 
‘services of each as they are needed.” ? This, the highest 
type of cooperation, must be based upon agreement as 
to principles and such agreement is a matter of slow 
growth. 

_ As difficult as it may be at times to secure effective co- 
‘Operation, it cannot be iterated too forcibly that in just 
the proportion that a charity organization society se- 
‘cures cooperation in the field of its endeavor, may it be 
said to be measuring up to the true test of efficiency, for 
without codperation the organization of charity is mani- 
festly impossible.” 


Tue District PLAN 


It will not be necessary to describe the forms of or- 
ganization found among various charity organization so- 
cieties. There is, however, one feature characteristic of 
all, except the smaller societies, which is so important as 
to merit special attention.* This is the district-plan_of 


* Amelia Sears, “The Charity Visitor,’ p. 13 (1913). 

2“The best way to deal successfully with destitution is to have as 
‘many as possible of the individuals, societies, and churches that are in- 
terested in the charitable work of the community allied together in the 
‘committees of the Charity Organization Society.” “What is Organized 
Charity?” p. 8, pamphlet published by the Charity Organization De- 
‘partment of the Russell Sage Foundation. 
_ *Those societies which laid emphasis from the start upon the district 
‘plan include Buffalo, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and 
Washington. 





I32 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


work, the district being the unit of organization through 
which the constructive work | of the society on behalf of 
needy families is done.’ 

Under the district plan of organization the city is 
‘divided up into what Dr. Chalmers called “manageable 
portions of civic territory.” * The attempt is made to 
break up the complex and unneighborly city into units 
that are neighborhoods, with all that the term implies. 
Under the plan, investigations are made, reports sent and 
all contacts with those of the district needing help are 
made by a salaried agent of the society (often called 
district superintendent), or one of his or her assistants, 
who is assigned to the district in question. The general 
office of the society, so far as the treatment of residents 
goes, merely sees that applications for aid which come to 
it reach the proper district, and that there is uniformity 
in work throughout the districts according to the aims of 
the society.® 

While a charity organization society may consider pov- 
erty as its problem and an interest in its causes as essen- 
tial, the first concern of the district office is not the prob- 
lem of poverty in the abstract but the study of the helpful 
resources, personal, civic, industrial, of the neighborhood 


*In the smaller societies where it is not necessary to divide the ter- 
ritory to be covered into districts there is nevertheless usually a com- 
mittee whose functions are identical with the district committee of the 
larger cities. 

*It is always possible to reduce the size of districts until they once 
more become really “manageable portions of civic territory.” As a 
matter of practice, however, the size of districts among the various char- 
ity organization societies of the country vary greatly. For example, some 
of the districts of the Chicago society have under their care as many 
families as the combined districts of the Buffalo Society. Boston is 
divided into sixteen districts, while Chicago, covering a considerably 
larger area, has less than ten. 

* Jeffrey R. Brackett, “District Charity Organization,’ The Charities 
Review, Vol. VII, p. 505 (1807). 

‘That there should be enough centralization to make the workers in 
the various districts feel that they are all part of a big system and 
enough to secure uniformity in the quality of work done is borne 
out by the conditions obtaining in Philadelphia until 1900, when the 
work of reorganization of its district system was begun. The so-called 
“Philadelphia system of independent districts” is now thoroughly dis- 

credited. 


1 
| 
: 


PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 133 





‘and of the city behind it, in order to be able to use any 
‘available for the solution of the problems of each poor 
family in the neighborhood. 
_ The advantages of the district plan of work are sev- 
‘eral. Beside affording a unit of territory that does not 
paralyze effort because of the size of the tasks it repre- 
‘sents, the district plan makes possible a spirit of neigh- 
borliness, a large element in all true charity. A neighbor- 
‘hood feeling may be made into a definite asset, into a real 
social force. The capable district superintendent ‘reads 
the interplay of social forces within his district as from 
‘an open book and no impatience with the mischievous 
land evil tendencies working therein can blind him to the 
human and hopeful side.”* Furthermore, the district 
office may supply a meeting place for all interested in the 
‘social needs of the neighborhood and so be the means 
‘of developing still further a real neighbor spirit of co- 
Operation and self-help.? It is in the conferences of the 
district committee that the habit of thinking and planning 
together is formed. The actual working together of 
individuals over small tasks, breaking down prejudices 
as it does and imparting better ideals of charity, thus 
becomes an important aid to codperation. It was the 
district form of organization which gave additional em- 
phasis to the fact that the new movement was no rival 
charity but a step in the direction of greater codperation. 
Moreover, the district office is near enough to all in 
the district that those in need of advice or assistance are 
saved the burden of car fare and time that a journey 


*M. E. Richmond, “Some Methods of Charitable Codperation,” 
Charities, Vol. VIT; p. 113 (1901). 

* Certain district committees of the New York Society, for example, 
have been instrumental in organizing neighborhood associations. While 
not organically connected with the district committees, many of the 
same people are interested in each. 

See also a description of “The House of Social Service in the Ch'cago 
Stockyards District,” by Mary E. McDowell, The Survey, Vol. XXXV, 
PP. 344-345 (1913). This building not only houses the United Charities 
of the Stockyards District but a half dozen or more social agencies 
working in the district. 


134 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


to a central city office would often entail. If the object 
of the society were negative, if it wanted to discourage 
its use by those in need of help this might prove an ad- 
vantage. It need hardly be pointed out that such is for- 
eign to the whole spirit of charity organization, just as 
making its service inaccessible is contrary to the ideals of 
visiting nursing or other public health movements. 

Finally, the district plan justifies its greater financial 
cost by its gain, not only in cooperation but in the num- 
ber of volunteers it is able to attract. Each district be- 
comes an additional center for winning volunteers.* 


THE CASE CONFERENCE 


The district committee which meets in case conference 
at least weekly is composed usually of residents of the 
district. The ideal committee is “one in which a small 
number of people who come faithfully meet very many 
others who come from time to time, to talk out what can 
be done for families in which they are interested.” ? 
Such a committee includes persons from many vocations 
and walks of life, men * as well as women, that an all- 
round point of view may obtain. 

The function of the case conference is, after hearing 
the reports of the professional workers as to the results of 
their investigation, to aid in the diagnosis of the more 
difficult family problems as they arise from week to week 
in the work of the district. The conference coming new 
to the problems laid before it often exhibits a fresh- 
ness of thought and vitality of interest that is remark- 
able. It is in a position to see the issues involved 


*In the sixteen districts in Boston there is but one paid agent in 
each. Much responsibility is carried by the volunteers. 

*“Organized Charity at Work,” The Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 564. 

*It is sometimes found desirable to have the case conference meet in 
the evenings that men may attend in larger numbers. For an account 
of a Men’s Conference see “Report of the Charity Organization Society 
of New York City for 1912,” p. 37. 


a 


PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 135 


‘in truer proportions than those who have wrestled first- 
hand with the problem from day to day. The collective 
experience of a group of mature and thoughtful persons 
is certainly a valuable asset to the district workers. 

A function of the case conference never to be over- 
looked is the educational. Discussion is an approved edu- 
cational process, and the case method of teaching is one 
gaining increasing recognition. No group of thoughtful 
and conscientious people can attend the conferences from 
week to week without acquiring a fund of information 
and insight into life and social forces to be gained in few 
other ways. ‘The educational possibilities of the district 
system of work are not limited to the volunteers. In 
societies where the district secretary is in full charge of 
the district (except finances) the district secretaryship 
becomes an excellent training school for positions of larger 
administrative responsibilities in the charity organization 


field.* 
? 3 DaILy COMMITTEE WoRK 


Some societies, notably the Boston Associated Char- 
ities, have instituted daily committee work. By a system 
of “daily committees,” a small number of members of the 
district case conference in turn come daily to the district 
office to confer with the secretary concerning families 
under care. It is the custom to have several of the older 
and more experienced visitors present each day. This 
informal contact with other visitors, especially the older 
ones, 1s suggestive and reassuring to the new recruits. 
These sessions of the daily committee are not “stiffened 
by the intangible formality of a conference.” Three 
persons can discuss far better than twenty.: This daily 
committee work brings visitors into such a relation with 
others’ work in the district as to make them feel re- 


*The Chicago district plan, for example, has been noteworthy in the 
humber of strong executives that it has developed. 


136 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


sponsibility for making suggestions about it. In short, 
it “aids all the work, makes the conference meetings 
more helpful and the visitor’s own service better.” * 


SOCIAL CASE TREATMENT 


If a man give me aught, he has done me a low benefit; 
if he enable me to do aught of myself, he has done me a 
high benefit. 
—Ralph Waldo Emerson. 


In charity organization work as in other forms of 
social case work it is impossible to separate diagnosis from 
treatment. Much that is discussed under one heading 
might just as appropriately find a place under the other. 
This is notably true of “Cooperation,” a subject already 
discussed but which shall again claim our attention. 

Social case treatment consists in organizing the social 
forces or resources of a community, including the latent 
powers in the individual or family to be helped, in such a 
fashion that a permanent cure or solution of the difficulty 
may be effected if humanly possible. 

To one with training and imagination the social forces 
in any community capable of organization are legion. 
They include “personal forces,” neighborhood forces,” 
civic forces,” ‘private charitable forces,” ‘“‘public relief 
forces,” and above all, the “forces” within the particular 
family to be helped. For a detailed statement of the na- 
ture of these forces, see the diagram on page opposite. 


* Zilpha D. Smith, “The Education of the Friendly Visitor,” The Chari- 
ties Review, Vol. II, p. 51 (1892). 

Those interested in the details of organization and methods of work 
of district committees will find the following valuable: 

“The Wheels of Organized Charity” (The Work of a District Com- 
mittee) issued by the Charity Organization Society of Buffalo, 3d edition 
(1918). 

Mary Willcox Glenn, “The City District in Charity Work,” The 
Survey, Vol. XXVII, pp. 1264-1265 (1911). 

* Mary E. Richmond, “Charitable Codperation,” Proceedings, National 
Conference of Charities and Correction, 28th session, p. 300 (1901). 






Private 


Relief Forces. 


harifable Force 





DIAGRAM OF FoRCES WITH WHICH THE SOCIAL WORKER MAY 


A—Family Forces. 


COOPERATE 


Capacity of each member for 


Affection. 

Training. 

Endeavor. 

Social development. 


B.—Personal Forces. 


Kindred. 
Friends. 


C—Neighborhood Forces. 


probation officers, _re- 
formatories. 

Health department, sani- 
tary inspectors, factory 
inspectors. 

Postmen. 


Parks, baths, etc. 


E.—Private Charitable Forces. 


Neighbors, landlords, trades- 


men. 
Former 
ployers. 
Clergymen, 
teachers, 
members. 
Doctors. 


fellow 


and present em- 


Sunday-school 
church 


Trade-unions, fraternal and 


benefit societies, 


social 


clubs, fellow-workmen. 
Libraries, educational clubs, 
classes, seitlements, etc. 


Thrift 
banks, 


agencies, 
stamp 


savings 
savings, 


building and loan associa- 


tions. 


D.—Civic Forces. 


Charity 
ciety. 
Church of denomination to 
which family belongs. 
Benevolent individuals. 
National, special, and gen- 
eral relief societies. 
Charitable employment 
agencies and work-rooms. 
Fresh-air society, children’s 
aid society, society for 
protection of children, 
children’s homes, etc. 
District nurses, sick-diet 
kitchens, dispensaries, 
hospitals, etc. 
Society for suppression of 
vice, prisoner’s aid so- 
clety, etc. 


organization so- 


F.—Public Relief Forces. 


School-teachers, truant of- 


ficers. 
Police, 


police magistrates, 


137 


Almshouses. 

Outdoor poor department. 

Public hospitals and dis- 
pensaries. 


138 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


The two outstanding features of the accompanying 
diagram are, first, the wealth of social resources ready at 
hand in most communities but often overlooked, and sec- 
ond, the order in which the various “forces” are listed. 
It is no mere chance that “family forces” stands in the in- 
nermost circle and ‘‘public relief forces” in the outermost 
one. To the wise case worker the potentialities of each 
individual or family is the first resource to be used. If 
people are to be enabled to develop their own capacities, 
and that is the only true help, then whatever the case 
worker does must be done with the individual instead of 
for him.t His active codperation must be secured and 
retained, or much work will be in vain; or worse, it will, 
as Charles S. Loch points out, tread on the soul while ad- 
ministering to the body.’ 

It is possible, moreover, to do much harm by turning 
first to forces labeled ‘“‘E” or “F” before utilizing those 
found under “B”, “C” and “D”. It is well to recall in 
this connection the main object lesson of Chalmers’ work 
in Glasgow that every community contains within itself 
a great invisible relief fund. Good case work requires 
not only the utilization of local social agencies, but also 
the unorganized social spirit to be found in all communi- 
ties. The wrong order in the use of the various forces 
listed may readily be the means of pauperizing the 
family in question by killing individual initiative and 
weakening family ties. In times of industrial depression 
there is the added danger of so increasing the work of 
the agencies represented by “‘E” and “F” as to swamp 
them, with the resulting lowering of the standards of their 


*“Tn nothing” (in the practice of charity) “would the change seem 
so marked as in our willingness to codperate with the poor themselves 
and with their neighbors.” Mary E. Richmond, “Charitable Coopera- 
tion,” Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correc- 
tion, 1901, p. 308, reprinted Charities, Vol. VII, p. 197 (1901). 

*C. S. Loch, “One Man’s Waste, Another Man’s Want,” Charity Or- 
ganization Review, Vol. XIV (new series), p. 170 (1903). 

*See p. 35. 


A 
ahes 


“PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 139 


. work and consequent harm to those for whom their serv- 


ices are primarily intended. 


ORGANIZING CHARITY 


“Why need we organize so sweet a thing as charity? 
We organize music which would otherwise be discord. 
We organize religion. Without organization, charity 


would be to a large extent waste and error.” 


—Annual Report of the Buffalo Charity Organization 
Society. 


It must not be inferred that the foregoing social 
“forces” are to be utilized singly. To the contrary, ef- 
fective social treatment implies working out the combina- 
tion of forces best suited to the needs of the individual 
or family in question. With many of the foregoing 
forces the skilled case worker must codperate simul- 
taneously if the goal, restoration to normal life in the 
community, is to be attained. It must never be over- 
looked that there is only one best combination of forces 
for each family, though there may be a dozen second 
“bests.” The meaning and method of organizing charity 
is so well illustrated by the following condensed case his- 
tory and by the chart that they are reproduced here in 


full. | 


“On the first day of December, 1909, as this man 
walked along the street upon his crutch, a gentleman, not- 
ing his crippled condition, stopped long enough to tell him 
to go to the Associated Charities. ‘The gentleman said 
they might help him’ was as definite as he could make his 
appeal. 

“A kindly interview brought out the facts that he was 
thirty years old, and had a wife and three small chil- 
dren. Until a year previous he had worked on a farm, 
when he lost his leg by an accidental gun-shot wound. 
Coming into town, for he could no longer support his 


I40 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


family in the country, they were all living in one small 
room, rented from the wife’s sister, herself a poor dress- 
maker. The wife worked in a factory and was earning 
$4.50 a week. The husband took care of the children. 

“Why couldn’t your wife stay at home with the chil- 
dren, do sewing, and let you find some light work?’ he 
was asked. 

“« “She can’t see to sew, and it makes her eyes hurt,’ was 
his reply. 

“Let us set down the rest of the story step by step, 
just as an agent of the Associated Charities brought it 
about: 

‘“‘An oculist examined the wife’s eyes. 

‘“‘An optician gave her the glasses. 

‘“‘An institution supplied temporary employment to the 
man, at which he proved his willingness to work. 

“Relatives cared for the children while both parents 
worked. 

‘“‘“A shoemaker agreed to take the man in his shop and 
teach him. the trade. 

‘““A Sunday-School class provided money equivalent to 
the wife’s earnings so that she might care for the chil- 
dren while the man served his apprenhicesiiys in the shoe- 
maker’s shop. 

‘““A public hospital treated both husband and wife dur- 
ing temporary sickness. 

‘“‘A dentist cured the wife’s neuralgia by treating her 
teeth. 

“The same Sunday-School class guaranteed the cost of 
a shoemaker’s outfit for the man and paid rent while 
he was building up a business. 

‘Numbers of individuals were found to give him work. 

“The result has been that this man paid for his outfit 
and is now making three times as much as his wife for- 
merly earned. The oldest child is in school, and has done 
so well that he has been advanced in his grade. In short, 
a hovel has been made into a prosperous home.” ! 


*The Fifth Annual Report of the Associated Charities of Atlanta, 
Georgia, pp. II-15. ; 


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QNILISIA 


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ei 7 
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YMIHLO Y 


SNOYXIWNN GILNISIAV 





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141 


I42 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


ADEQUATE TREATMENT 


“T used to be taught as a child that I must not water 
my garden unless I were prepared to do it thoroughly, 
for that to sprinkle the surface of the earth caused the 
plants to turn their roots upward in search of moisture 
instead of striking deeper down into the firm, moist soil 
below, then when the drought came they perished. So 
with the unfortunate people who are subjected to 
sprinkling charity, they are always on the lookout for 
the little gifts which come dropping casually in, and 
they never get a chance of developing resource and self- 
reliance.” 

—Helen Bosanquet, “Rich and Poor,” p. 182. 


Adequate treatment, as just illustrated, means doing 
for and in codperation with an individual or family all 
those things revealed by a careful investigation, and a 
skillful diagnosis as necessary for the rehabilitation of the 
individual or family in question. They may be few and 
quickly completed, or many and take much money and 
years of service. In either event the adequacy of the 
treatment depends upon a comprehensive and coordinate 
plan of action. Adequate treatment must not be con- 
fused with adequate relief. Adequate treatment may or 
may not involve the use of gifts of money or goods. 
Adequate treatment is a far bigger and more difficult 
task than adequate relief. 

The old view of charity was to see mainly the imme- 
diate conditions and resulted often in helping people m 
their poverty. The new view studies the applicant’s 
whole situation, in order to discover how many and how 
varied his disabilities may be, and at the same time, looks 
for every weak place in the organization of the family of 
which he is a part in order to strengthen it. In short, 
it aims to help people out of their poverty and to keep 
them out. Such treatment includes not only the bread- 


4 


ee 2 


. 


‘PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION I43 


. 


‘winner, whose temporary sickness may have been the 
occasion for turning to a charity organization society, 
but extends to every member of the family, including the 
youngest child, who is viewed as the potential head of a 
family, whose foundations are now being laid in his or her 
education or lack of it; in his or her health or ill-health; 
and in his or her moral stamina or lack of it. In short, 
adequate treatment means not half measures but helping 
thoroughly, carrying through resolutely, a plan no mat- 
ter what the expense. It implies always the long range 
point of view, the attitude of mind that looks ten or fif- 
teen years or even longer into the future. 

The elements of adequate treatment are becoming in- 
creasingly numerous but at the same time increasingly 
definite. With the relation of poverty to physical disease 
becoming clearer, a change has naturally followed in the 
conception of adequate treatment. Studies in standards 
of living including such items as recreation and oppor- 
tunities for spiritual advance as well as food allowances 
for healthy children, have opened case workers’ eyes as 
to what constitutes the cost of normal family life. The 
development of mental hygiene is causing still other 
changes not only in social diagnosis but in our concep- 
tions of adequate social treatment. 

In short, it may be said, that all charity organization 
workers are to-day agreed that treatment that is adequate 
is always characterized by the long range point of view, 
that it has as its highest aim the understanding and im- 
provement of character or at least the avoidance of any- 
thing that would weaken character, and that though it 
may not raise the standard of living of the family helped 
above the definite minimum standard which satisfies the 
public sentiment of the community, it does not on the 
other hand lower it. 


144 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


PERSONAL SERVICE 


“T have sometimes been asked by rich acquaintances 
whether I do not remember the words, ‘Never turn thy 
face from any poor man.’ I cannot help thinking that 
to give one’s self rather than one’s money to the poor 
is not exactly turning one’s face from him.” 

—Octavia Hill} 


“A helping hand is one thing, an open hand is an- 
other.” 
—Edward T. Devine. 


The biggest single factor in social treatment is what 
for want of a better term is called personal service; by 
which is meant the knowledge, judgment, patience and 
inspiration that goes into every well thought-out and ef- 
fectively executed plan for rehabilitation. The acid test 
of such service is that it result in another man’s ennoble- 
ment. 

The following incident fo the day’s work of one 
society is illustrative: 


“She was dressed in black, a woman whose strength 
lay in her repose; whose quiet personality bespoke the 
competent mother. She had come to the Central Office 
of the Society. 

‘“‘“T would like to speak to some one who knew Miss 
Henry,’ she said. 

“Miss Henry died nine years ago. 

‘““<T have not been in this building since that time,’ 
continued the woman, ‘but to-day I felt that I ought to 
tell some one in the Society what Miss Henry did for me.’ 

“Then she said that fifteen years ago she had come 
under the care of the Society’s Gramercy District, of 
which Miss Henry was secretary. With the gentleness 
of one who has ceased to reproach the past, the woman 


*Quoted in the Tenth Annual Report, Philadelphia Society for Or- 
ganizing Charity (1888). 


iy 
t 


PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 145 


told how when she was twenty-one years old she had 
learned that the man to whom she had been married was 
abigamist. He had deserted her and her three children. 
In the shock of this crisis she thought herself convicted 
of immorality. Life seemed hopeless and she began to 
drink. 

_ “Then Miss Henry found her, convinced her of her 
innocence, steadied her, saw that the money needed to 
keep the family together was provided, and later found 
her work so that for years she had been self-supporting. 
The children are now grown up and are contributing their 
share toward the income of the household. 

| “ “Miss Henry not only saved my home,’ concluded the 
woman as quietly as she had begun, ‘she saved my 
soul.’ ” ? 


The further one gets from the conception of the 
‘Economic Man,” of the classical economists of England, 
and the nearer to an understanding of the “Whole Man,” 
the less is the importance that one attaches to orders of 
groceries in social case treatment and the greater is the 
significance one places on that form of personal relation- 
ship which puts one in touch with opportunities and is 
best described as friendship. Life demands of all, knowl- 
edge that is not covered by the three R’s or imparted 
in even the most modern of schools. Personal service 
must supply the deficiencies for thousands who are for 
one reason or another unadjusted. The relationship in 
30me ways is that of teacher and taught. As with many 
other educators the teaching is not all done by one 
side. 


| VOLUNTEER SERVICE 


/ One of the most characteristic features, if not the most 
characteristic feature, of a charity organization society 
is its use of volunteer service: The fact that such 


, *“Charity Organization Bulletin,” No. 156 (Dec. 27, 1916), published 
by the Charity Organization Society of New York City. 
"In a public address in Philadelphia in 1915, Miss Richmond at- 


7 


\ 


146 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


societies constantly try to increase rather than diminish 
the proportion of their work that is done by unpaid vol- 
unteer workers is not surprising to one who understands 
their aims. 

No contrast between the charitable thought immediately 
preceding the initial stages of the C. O. S. movement and 
that which followed, stands out more clearly than 
the importance placed on volunteer service. It was ad- 
vocated not merely as a means of improving the poor and 
their condition but as a means of educating the charitably 
disposed individuals, the men and women who are willing 
to give either time or money or both for the relief of dis- 
tress. The emphasis which the new movement laid on 
a first-hand knowledge of the problems of poverty and on 
intercourse with the poor thus revived and brought into 
wider use a method of educating the well-to-do, already 
discovered by Chalmers in Glasgow? and Tuckerman 
in Boston.? 

Volunteer service covers a wide range of activities, in- 
cluding office work, service on special committees, attend- 
ance at daily or weekly case conferences and friendly 
visiting, a discussion of which will presently claim our 
attention. The variety of opportunities for service means 
a place for many kinds of talents.* The charity organiza- 
tributed the fact that the number of charity organization societies had 
more than doubled during the past ten years to the emphasis laid on 


volunteer service. 


*See pp. 33-38. 

*See pp. 70-76. 

* Writing of the whole field of social work, Dr. Devine concludes an 
appeal to college graduates for service in the following words: “The 
ultimate social message is a call to volunteer service. The points of 
attack are many: the rehabilitation of broken families, the protection 
of threatened young girls, the guidance of young boys whose habits 
are forming, the p.evention of such exploitation as that of the loan 
sharks, the abolition of the local jail, the socializing of police systems 
and of educational systems, the stamping out of infectious disease, the 
social control of abnormal heredity, the maintenance of reasonable stand- 
ards of living—and other tasks, some of which are easier than these. 
In all of them it is easy to go astray from lack of preparation, and in 
all of them there is full exercise for those powers of the soul which 
the college has called into conscious existence.” Editorial, ‘som 
Forces,” The Survey, Vol. XXVI, p. 468 (1911). 


— ae 
— 


PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 147 


tion society is thus a means whereby all those who can 
contribute time or money or both may make their benevo- 
lence beneficence. Such service may be made both 
democratic and efficient. It is a means of extending the 
work of the society and in addition brings to the paid staff 
not only the stimulus of the non-professional worker but 
also the added protection of having to explain one’s 
work and justify one’s decisions to those who come with 
a fresh point of view and with whom there is the normal 
horror at abnormal conditions. The continual and unre- 
lieved succession of one abnormal situation after another 
must necessarily have a warping effect upon the judg- 
ment. 

“There was a time,” writes a former president of the 
National Conference of Social Work, “when leaders in 
social work inclined to the belief that the constructive 
social work of the country would have to be left in large 
measure to those who made a vocation of social service. 
Such an attitude was natural and, at the time that it was 
held, was helpful. While professional standards of work 
were first being formulated and tentative efforts were 
being made to establish a living wage for members of a 
professional social staff, the emphasis had to fall heavily 
on the importance to the field of the professional, whole- 
time worker, even though the emphasis tended to belittle 
the value of the volunteer, or part-time worker.” + Such 
emphasis had the additional value of helping to make 
clear the fact that there must be some preparation for 
service, no matter what the conditions of service are, but 
now “has come an enlarged appreciation of the demand 
for a social force that shall be representative of all sec- 
tions of the community—of all races, creeds, classes, in- 
‘erests—that shall include those who have money, those 
who have service, those who have both to give, and those 
who give themselves without stint, whether or not there 


*Mary Willcox Glenn, “A Prelude to Peace,” The Survey, Vol. 
XXXIV, pp. 200-201 (1915). 


148 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


be made any partial payment for services rendered.” *| 
This, however, should not be taken to mean that willing-| 
ness to help is in itself a qualification. Intelligence, dis- 
cretion, and general dependableness are as indispensable 
here as elsewhere. ‘“Therefore it is better to have it un- 
derstood at first,” writes Miss Richmond, “that, paradox- 
ical as it may sound, volunteers are not expected to volun- 
teer, but that they will be asked to work as they are 
needed. To be asked to volunteer, then, becomes some-| 
thing of a distinction, and any possible sentiment of doing 
the society a favor by serving it is eliminated.”* The 
most successful continuous work is usually done by volun- 
teers acting under intelligent leadership, and with a 
trained paid agent.* , | 

To sum up, there are at least four good reasons) 
for the use of volunteers. First, professional or better 
“vocational” workers alone can never give all the personal 
service needed in a community; nor should they unless: 
one imposes on the paid staff of a charity organization 
society a responsibility it never claims. This does not; 
mean, however, that volunteers should ever be used) 
merely for sake of economy. Second, the volunteers may) 
bring a freshness of vision and enthusiasm to their work 
which is contagious and invaluable to the work of the 
whole society. Third, each volunteer means for the 
society just one more vital contact with the community. | 
Such contacts provide intelligent channels of enlighten-| 
ment and constructive criticism. Fourth, but not least,| 
where there are the largest number of volunteers coming’ 
into first hand and constant touch with the disadvantaged 
groups, there you are likely to have a more intelligent 
interest in the poor and the causes of poverty. Each| 










1Mary Willcox Glenn, “A Prelude to Peace,’ The Survey, Vol.| 
XXXIV, p. 201 (1915). | 
?M. E. Richmond, “The Case for the Volunteer, The Survey, Vol.| 
XXIX, p. 423 (1913). 
* There is grave danger in having volunteers in high executive pos! 
tions. If they lack judgment, it is hard to control them and to remove} 
them from office. 


PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 149 


volunteer becomes in a sense an educator in matters that 
make for the good of the whole community. 


VOLUNTEER FRIENDLY VISITING 


Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and 
have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. 
—Saint Paul. 


Not what we give, but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare. 
James Russell Lowell. 


The need for friendship and neighborliness is so great 
in a large city or even in a smaller community that charity 
Organization societies develop friendly visiting as a 
fundamental part of the personal service they render to 
many of their families. Personal influence over one hun- 
dred and fifty to two hundred families in charge during 
a year’s work is not possible for a district secretary. 
‘Such a secretary may be an excellent guardian but only in 
rare instances can he or she be a friend. Such work is 
therefore almost always part of the work of volunteer 
or avocational workers, and hence the above caption. 

“Every one interested” (in the inadequacy of mere 
almsgiving) ‘ought to read the story of Edward Deni- 
son and all that Octavia Hill has to say of the vast sums 
which the wealth of London has poured into its haunts 
of misery, and the futility of it all until a something else 
went with the money,—or went without it.”’ An ap- 
preciation of this truth early led charity organization 
societies to stress the importance of establishing a per- 
manent personal relationship between a family in distress 
and some volunteer who would act as a friend. 

As there is apparently much misunderstanding, both in 


_ *Fanny B. Ames, “Adequate Relief vs. Dole-giving,”’ Lend-a-Hand, 
Vol. I, p. 227 (1886). 


150 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


and outside the ranks of social workers, as to the essen- 
tial nature of friendly visiting, it will save confusion to 
define the term at once. “We are friendly visitors when 
we call upon our immediate neighbors. In visiting the 
poor we are simply enlarging our circle of friends, and the 
responsibility of friendship. We are not to burst upon 
those of our acquaintance who happen to be poor with 
advice, moralizing, inquisitiveness or gratuities. When 
we first meet them we are strangers, and must show the 
respect due to persons upon whom we have no claim. We 
are just as much strangers to them as if we knew nothing 
of their affairs, and we should show them some reason 
for our first visit. We are almost sure to be welcomed. 
Perhaps we can do nothing more than perform our errand 
and suggest calling again. Illness or little children or 
some chance occurrence may give us an opportunity to 
get faster upon good terms. In any case let us remem- 
ber that, as nothing springs from nothing, we must our- 
selves be frank, courteous, patient, sensible, and really 
friendly, if we are to inspire like qualities in those we 
seek to influence. Example will do much more than 
preaching. What we are, and not what we do, counts 
most.” 1 Friendly visiting is not, in the language of an- 
other ? well qualified to speak on the subject, “wise meas- 
ures of relief, it is not getting the children in school 
or training them for work; it is not improving sanitary 
arrangements and caring for the sick; it is not teaching 
cleanliness or economical cooking or buying; it is not en- 
forcing habits of thrift or encouraging healthful recrea- 
tions. It may be a few of these things or all of them, 
but it is always something more. Friendly visiting means 
intimate and continuous knowledge of and sympathy with 


1“The Friendly Visitor,” leaflet published by the Associated Charities, 
Washington, D. C. 

2“Miss Richmond, in ‘The Good Neighbor,’ has given the best exposi- 
tion of what may be called the orthodox charity organization view” of 
friendly visiting, writes Mr. Devine editorially in Charities and the 
Commons, Vol. XIX, p. 1636 (1908). 


7 
‘PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION I5I 


‘a poor family’s joys, sorrows, opinions, feelings and entire 
outlook upon life.” + Friendly visiting thus differs from 
all other kinds of charitable visiting in that it is continu- 
‘ous, and in that while other social workers may come 
‘into contact with many families on one side, the friendly 
visitor learns to know a few families on many sides and 
expects to form a permanent relation. The friendly vis- 
‘itor is the personal embodiment of the slogan of many 
‘societies, ‘“Not alms, but a friend.” 

The contributions of a real friendly visitor are many 
‘and involve no sense of moral superiority. “I think,” 
‘writes Dr. Devine, “that we may quite safely throw 
‘overboard once and for all the idea that the dependent 
‘poor are our moral inferiors—that there is a necessary 
‘connection between wealth and virtue, or between poverty 
‘and guilt—as we have already thrown over the opposite 
‘idea that in poverty alone there is some peculiar merit.” ” 
‘Often the thing most needed which the friendly visitor 
can supply is knowledge—and courage and cheer,— 
knowledge how better to run a house, or for a widow, 
how best to handle a boy inclined to be a rover; courage 
and cheer to face these numberless complications of every 
‘life which in some instances become complicated beyond 
their worst. 

The relation of friendly visitor is not one to be lightly 
‘entered into. It is not for a temporary crisis, but involves 
continuous relationship that may extend over years. The 
‘visitor that has this view of his or her place in the 
‘Organization of charity,’ writes Miss Richmond, “‘is 
‘unlikely to blunder either about relief, or any detail; 
‘without it, he is almost certain, in any charitable relations 
‘with members of the family, to blunder seriously.” 3 


*M. E. Richmond, “Friendly Visiting Among the Poor,” Charities Re- 
view, Vol. IX, p. 42 (1899). 

2F. ii Devine, “Economic Aspects of Material Relief,” Charities, Vol. 
XT, p. 541 (1903). 

MM. E. Richmond, “Friendly Visiting Among the Poor,” Ghussies 
‘Review, Vol. IX, p. 43 Geka) 


152 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


A friendly visitor is neither a social diagnostician nor 
an almsgiver. ‘The visitor goes not as a judge, almoner, 
trustee or capitalist, but as one who, having had limited 
experience in the trials of life and methods of overcom- 
ing them, endeavors to apply such experiences in aid of a 
fellow-being who had had less favorable opportunities.” 4 
His or hers is the high office of friend. It is in this 
capacity that he or she gradually gains personal knowl- 
edge of family resources, tastes, ambitions, and grad- 
ually also that personal influence which counts for most 
in moulding the lives of all and on which the finest type 
of social case work depends. It is in this sense that 
friendly visiting is frequently referred to as the “soul” 
or ‘flower’ of charity organization. 

It is sometimes urged that friendly visiting is misnamed, 
as friendship can grow out of only the so-called normal 
relationships of life. Real affection cannot be forced or 
created and does not come in response to command or as 
a result of economic or social convenience. While this 
may be true, it is urged in reply that such did not pre- 
vent the Good Samaritan from aiding the man who fell 
among thieves and was thereby neighbor unto him. Fur- 
thermore, it is the conviction of many who have had 
experience with friendly visitors that the capacity of most 
people for friendship is greater than they themselves 
imagine.” The late Professor Shaler has pointed out a 
very encouraging fact about human beings, when he tells 


*W. J. Breed, “The Obligations of Personal Work in Aid to Right 
Structure of Character,’ The Charities Review, Vol. II, pp. 67-70 (1892). 

* The superintendent of friendly visiting of the St. Paul A. C. records 
as follows certain definite results of the relations established between 
the visitors and the families: 


“T see the acquaintance begun with hesitancy and misgiving on the 
part of the visitor, and with questioning and misunderstanding on the 
part of the visited, ripen into one of confidence, trustfulness and hope- 
fulness. I see the children and young people of these poor homes slowly 
becoming accustomed to the welcome offered them in the homes of 
their new-found friends, and in some instances becoming frequent guests 
therein. I see them being taught useful industries. I see tired mothers 
turn with gratitude and words of praise to young women who cheer 


PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 153 


us that “the revolt we feel at the sight of a man who is 
grievously wounded, or has any sore affliction which 
“makes him appear Abnormal, passes away as soon as we 
“Jay a helpful hand on his body. Something of this dis- 
sipation of the instinctive prejudice to the apparently 
inhuman nature of the neighbor will take place when a 
‘person of well-trained sympathies . . . vigorously goes 
forth to the sufferer by exercise of the will.” ! 
' Along with a real knowledge of life which a friendly 
visitor needs, must go the sympathetic understanding and 
‘robust optimism that spells courage to the discouraged 
fand strength to the weak. And this must be crowned 
with such a spirit of humility as will lead one ‘to walk 
for many dreary miles beside the lowliest of His (God’s) 
‘creatures, not even in the peace of mind, that the com- 
_panionship of the humble is popularly supposed to give, 
but rather with the pangs and misgivings to which the 
poor human understanding is subjected whenever it at- 
tempts to comprehend the meaning of life.” In brief, 
wherever friendly visiting has succeeded, it has done so 
‘In direct proportion to the degree that there was an 
absence of condescension and a presence of the atti- 
tude of mind found in simple, whole-hearted neighbor- 
liness. 

“What charitable visitors need,” writes Dr. Devine, 
“more than money in their purse, is faith in their poor, 
humility of spirit, jolly comradeship, sheer psychic power 


| 





their homes and tenderly minister to their feeble offspring. I see the 
eyes of invalid mothers brighten when the cheerful friends make frequent 
calls. I see young women becoming companions to those who need an 
older sister’s counsel and support. I see the heroic efforts of visitors 
who are trying to lift to the purer atmosphere of self-dependence those 
whose low standard of life accepts pauperism and beggary. I see earnest 
_ visitors carrying a real heart sorrow that as yet there is no evidence 
(outward) of better impulses in stubborn, intemperate or wayward 
lives.” Anon., “Organized Charity at Work: St. Paul,” Charities Re- 
view, Vol. X, p. 490 (1900). 
_ *N. S. Shaler, “The Neighbor: the Natural History of Human Con- 
“tacts,” p. 32 (1904). 
2 Jane Addams, ‘The Subtle Problems of Charity,” Atlantic Monthly, 
Vol. LXXXIII, p. 178 (1899). 


154 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


to carry conviction for the right and sensible action 
against every argument springing from discouragement or 
bitterness or suspicion; from ignorance or stubbornness 
or weakness; even against such plausible arguments as 
arise from the very virtues and sound instincts of the 
Dpooneie 

The relationship involved in friendly visiting, if its full 
possibilities are realized,” is a reciprocal one, for those 
below the poverty line have lessons to teach as well as 
those above it. Speaking of the tenants of her improved 
London cottages, Octavia Hill writes: “I must add in 
gratitude that I have much to thank them for. Their 
energy and hope amid overwhelming difficulties have 
made me ashamed of my own laziness and despair. I 
have seen the inevitable results of faults and omissions of 
mine that I had never sufficiently weighed. Their pa- 
tience and thankfulness are a glad cause of admiration 
to me continually. I trust that our relation to one another 
may grow better and nearer for many years.” ? 

The part that friendly visiting plays in treatment varies 
markedly throughout the country. Most of the societies 
have had difficulty in finding able and willing visitors. 
Many have almost given up their use for this reason. 
Doubtless one element in the situation is due to the rapid 
growths of our cities, causing them to spread over wide 
areas and resulting in a wide geographical separation of 
the homes of potential friendly visitors and those most in 
need of their neighborliness.* It is to this same geographi- 


*Edward T. Devine, “A Medieval Efficiency Test,” The Survey, Vol. 
XXXI, p. §97 (1914). 

* Not all personal service is effective. It may be unquestionably per- 
sonal and also very mischievous. 

* Octavia Hill, “Homes of the London Poor,” Reprinted by the New 
York State Charities Aid Association, publication No. 8, p. 4 (1875). 

*For example, in Chicago the two axes of the city are 27 miles by 
11 miles. In a city three to four times the size of Boston, transportation 
alone is no inconsiderable factor. Boston, on the other hand, has re- 
tained a simpler way of living and looking at life than is found in many 
cities of its size. There obtains there an unusual willingness of all 
classes to take hold and codéperate. 


iy 
i 


PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 155 


‘cal separation that the social settlement movement, which 
‘took root in the United States in 1887, owes its origin. 
‘Immigration with its resulting foreign quarters in many 
‘American cities has often raised barriers, not only geo- 
graphical but racial and social, including differences of 
language—barriers which though not insurmountable, 
have nevertheless increased the difficulty of friendly vis- 
‘iting. 
_ Aside from the difficulties just enumerated, there are 
other factors which explain the relatively greater success 
‘of some societies in friendly visiting than others. A lack 
‘of any real effort and skill in the continuous organizing 
of friendly visitors is bound to give poor results.1 Too 
often a visitor appointed to a family goes his or her 
‘own way, fails or succeeds on his or her own knowledge. 
It is a misuse of the friendly visitor to send such with lit- 
tle or no training and without a plan to a family with 
whom experts may have already failed. A big element of 
success in all friendly visiting depends upon choosing 
visitors with care, realizing that some people by tem- 
‘perament and experience have a genius for friendship, 
and that every one’s value in any line of activity increases 
with training. Accordingly training classes and group dis- 
cussions for friendly visitors should be an integral part 
of the work of the society. At such regular conferences 
the visitors gain an understanding of the problems con- 
fronting them through association with other visitors, and 
are made to feel their responsibility and that as a trained 
group of workers whose advice is valuable they are a vital 
part of the work. Asked the reason of Boston’s excep- 
tional progress in this branch of the work, Miss Zilpha 
D. Smith, then general secretary of the society, replied 
that in so far as conditions differed in Boston from other 
places, ‘‘the difference is that somebody in the conference 
*As one of the workers in the Boston Associated Charities tersely 
put it, “Once the A. C. gets you, you are lost. It never lets go of you. 


For a district superintendent to lose a volunteer is viewed as as big 
an error as to go wrong on a case.” 


156 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


has the power of organization and does that work. That 
is the secret of it all. That is what our local conferences 
are for. If they be fully successful there must be two 
or three persons in them who have the power of holding 
things together and fitting them to their places. It re- 
quires patience and tact. . . . You have not only to learn 
the characteristics of the poor, but of all your visi- 
tors.” ! 

In short, if volunteer visitors fail it is probably “‘be- 
cause it is assumed that good visitors are born good vis- 
itors.”* There may be born good visitors but ‘“cer- 
tainly most of the good visitors in any group are made.” 3 


RELIEF 


Relief as it is here used refers to the material aspects 
of treatment. It is the medicine that a physician may 
prescribe in the course of his treatment, in which it may 
have an important but often secondary part. It is a 
means to an end, never an end in itself. Unlike medicine 
it is valuable only as it has a vital relation to family life, 
on its mental and spiritual sides as well as the physical. 

It is now almost axiomatic to add that whatever relief 
is used should be adequate. This may involve a few or a 
few hundred dollars. Only a real understanding of the 


*See Proceedings National Conference of Charities and Correction, 
12th session, p. 482 (1885). 

*Zilpha D. Smith, “Discussion of Friendly Visiting,” Proceedings, 
National Conference of Charities and Correction, 28th session, p. 405 
(1901). 

° Ibid., p. 405. 

For further references see: 

M. E. Richmond, “Friendly Visiting Among the Poor” (1914). 

M. E. Richmond, “The Good Neighbor in the Modern City” (1908). 
M. E. Richmond, “Friendly Visiting,” Proceedings, National Conference 
of Charities and Correction, 34th session, pp. 307-315 (1907). 
Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correction, 28th 
session, pp. 398-408 (1901), being the minutes and discussion of a 
section meeting on Friendly Visiting. Miss Zilpha D. Smith, Chair- 
man. 

Porter R. Lee, “A Visit to the Boston Visitors,’ Charities, Vol. XVI, 


Pp. 589-592 (1906). 


| PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 157 





/meeds of normal family life in each particular case can 
‘decide the amount that is adequate. 

As greater and more accurate knowledge is acquired 
of what is needed for each family’s physical, mental and 
spiritual health, it is apparent that the amount of relief 
deemed adequate at an earlier day no longer meets the 

‘new tests. Relief administered with no standards of 
fe ctacy means poor food, room overcrowding, lodgers 
when there is no accommodation consistent with pro- 
priety, the sending of the mother into industry even 
‘where there are still small children, and child labor. 
‘Such relief but continues the vicious circle of poverty, 
‘pointed out by Rowntree in his study of poverty,—poor 
food meaning poor physique, poor work, poor wages and 
again poor food. In its right place ‘money can be 
made quite as spiritual in its effects as the alms of good 
advice.” 1 Certainly “inadequate relief is torture and 
temptation.” ? The possible harm of relief giving is 
“much modified,” as Jane Addams has well observed, 
“where it goes (as it often will under the district plan) 
not to strangers but to acquaintances, or rather, may we 
not say, to friends, for the friendship of a friendly visitor 
should be reciprocal.” ® 

The difficult question in regard to relief is not so much 
when to use it as to decide the right amount in a given 
instance. Fortunately an increasing number of scientific 
studies of standards of living is reducing the margin of 
doubt by standardizing what was otherwise personal opin- 
ion or guess work as to quantity and quality of food, 
clothing, shelter, recreation, etc., necessary to maintain 
physical and spiritual efficiency.* 


*Frederic Almy, “Constructive Relief,’ The Survey, Vol. XXVII, 
mei205 (101r). 
2A motto used in the letters of appeal for funds for individual 
families in need by the Charity Organization Society of New York City. 
®See Frederic Almy, “Codperation of Churches in Charity,” Charities, 
Vol. VII, p. 205 (1901). 

*For example the various scientific studies of food values (Atwater and 
others), of family budgets (the earliest United States study of value being 
as late as 1901), and studies of standards of living such as that of Chapin 


158 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


An interesting question is raised as to the position of a 
charity organization society in a district where the stand- 
ard of living is below the accepted American standard 
for the country at large. There is in each community 
a definite minimum standard of living which satisfies the 
public sentiment of that community. Charitable relief is 
concerned not with raising or lowering that standard, but 
rather with eliminating the obstacles which particular in- 
dividuals and families have in realizing the standard, 
and in securing the withdrawal from the industrial class 
of those who are unfit for a place in it.t ‘No charity 
organization society,’ writes Dr. Devine, ‘“‘can announce 
that it has adopted a standard of $750 for the average 
family, and that henceforth all incomes below that amount 
will be supplemented by such an allowance as will bring 
them up to this standard. Such a policy would tend not 
only to financial bankruptcy, but to a far more serious 
bankruptcy of character.” * The responsibility for pay- 
ing a living wage rests squarely on the shoulders of 
industry. This is in harmony with the same writer’s 
objection to relief to a family in which an able-bodied 
man is earning, or able to earn the current wage, 
even if that wage is too small.? Such a procedure 
would be tantamount to supplementing wages with char- 
ity, thereby helping to keep wages down below the level 
which permits of an adequate family standard of living. 
This does not mean that charity organization societies 
are not interested in vigorously calling attention to the 
(1909). The Report of 1906-07 of the Committee on Standards of 
Living of the New York State Conference of Charities and Correction 
influenced the conception of adequacy of relief, at least in the state. 

In addition to the increase of such information as the foregoing the 
conceptions of protected childhood and the growing interest in matters 
of public health have influenced the current view as to what constitutes 
adequacy of relief. As one worker expressed it, “The health movement 
has increased our budget 30 per cent.” 

*See E. T. Devine, “Principles of Relief,” p. 38 (1904) ; also “Efficiency 
and Relief,” p. 17 (1906). 

mage read We Devine, “Social Forces,” an editorial, Charities and the Com- 


mons, Vol. XIX, p. 1083 (1907). 
*E. T. Devine, “Principles of Relief,” p. 21, also p. 24 (1904). 


' PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 159 


evil effects of inadequate wages. The low wages of 


women and children are in some cases supplemented by 


charity organization societies, but earnest efforts are 


usually made to encourage the employer to pay a fair 


wage, agents of the society not infrequently calling upon 
the employers of under-paid widows and children, and, 
failing to secure better pay for them, helping their clients 


- to secure other jobs. 


While it is customary in administering relief to bear 
in mind the previous standard of the family in question, 
there are certain cases where the standard sought in 
treatment means an increase in the expenditures of the 
family over that obtaining when independent of charity. 
This is often necessary in order to maintain physical ef- 


ficiency. It is always, however, restricted to those fam- 
ilies where continuous charity is called for covering 


years, where the family is responsive and the earnings of 
the family group and the contributions of relatives not 
relaxed.” As to the wisdom of ttis, owing to the pos- 


sible harm that such a practice may have on society at 


large, authorities differ.* 

As to whether a family needing relief should receive 
the same in money, in goods, or in orders on certain 
stores, practice varies. The weight of opinion seems to 
be in favor of relief in money, it being held that to de- 
prive a person of the function of spending is to make that 
person poor indeed. The purchase of each of the three 
great necessities of life, food, clothing, and shelter, is an 
Opportunity for self-development. The purchase of each 


*See pamphlet, “My Money Won’t Reach,” being the findings of a 
study of 377 Self-supporting Families in New York City, published by 
the New York Charity Organization Society, April, 1918. 

*See Frederic Almy, “Constructive Relief,’ The Survey, Vol. XXVII, 
pp. 1265-1266 (1911). 

*For both sides of this general question, see Homer Folks, ‘The Care 
of Needy Families in Their Homes,” Charities, Vol. VII, p. 416 (1901) ; 
Editorial, Charities, Vol. VII, p. 420 (1901) ; Frederic Almy, “Standards 
of Living as Standards of Relief,” Charities and the Commons, Vol. 


_ XXI, pp. 1127-1129 (1909); Francis H. McLean, “Standards of Living 
Again,” Charities and the Commons, Vol. XXI, p. 1008 (1909). 


160 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


of these has a dominant psychological benefit, that of food 
being barter, that of rent being foresight, and that of 
clothing being self-expression.1 

In answer to the objection that a society can purchase 
more economically than the client because of wholesale 
rates or greater wisdom, the irrefutable answer is that the 
first interest of social work should be to save families 
rather than money. If the family is not taught how to 
administer its finances by experience, it will have little 
chance ever to learn.” 


SOURCES OF RELIEF 


The first source of relief of charity organization socie- 
ties is kindred, neighbors, friends, in short, the “invisible 
relief fund” found in every community. Often these 
natural sources are soon exhausted and the problem of 
supplying relief from other sources becomes imperative. 
Four methods of meeting this situation, obtain among 
charity organization societies, either singly or in combina- 
tion. 


I. The Case-by-Case Method. 

II. From Relief Societies. 
III. From General Funds Maintained by the C. O. S. 
IV. From Public Funds. 


*For an excellent exposition of this thesis see “Food, Shelter, and 
Clothing,’ by Emma A. Winslow “Home Economist of the New York 
Charity Organization Society,” The Survey, Vol. XXXVII, pp. 45 and 
40, (1916). 

* For further study see: 

Frederic Almy, ‘Relief,’ a Primer, Russell Sage Foundation Pamphlet. 

Porter R. Lee, “Treatment, ” Russell Sage Foundation Pamphlet. 

Frederic Almy, “Adequate Relief,’ Proceedings, National Conference of 
Charities and Correction, 38th session, p. 281 (1911). 

M. E. Richmond, “Adequate Relief,’ Proceedings, National Conference 
of Charities and Correction, 38th session, p. 292 (1911). 

M. E. Richmond, “Friendly Visiting Among the Poor,’ Chapter IX 
(1899.) 

E. T. Devine, “Principles of Relief,’ Part I, Chapters II, VI, VU, 
VIII, XI, XV (1904). 


1} 
}) 
t 


I 
PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION I61 


! 

In addition to the above, a fund for emergency relief 
is almost universally maintained by charity organization 
‘societies, so that all immediate needs may be met within 
twenty-four hours pending a social diagnosis. Sometimes 
‘such a fund is maintained by a committee to which it is 
understood the society may turn for emergency needs. 


THE CASE-BY-CASE METHOD 


The case-by-case plan of raising money for relief 
_ purposes is a distinctive feature of charity organization 
‘societies.2 The method is one most often used for those 
families where the prospect is that relief will be needed 
for some time. In the larger societies it is usual for the 
district committee or conference to ascertain the total 
‘income of such a family and the amount needed in 
addition, to maintain a reasonable standard of life. The 
case then comes to a central committee on appeals. This 
committee, before attempting to secure the pension, makes 
sure that the natural resources have been exhausted, that 
physical defects of children have been rectified, that ex- 
amination for tuberculosis has been made, that school 
attendance is being ‘kept, and that a friendly visitor has 
been secured—or at least that efforts to secure such a 
visitor are being made.* Usually a representative of the 
district committee is present at the meetings of the central 
committee when the case of a family in which it is inter- 
ested is discussed. The committee on appeals then raises 

*In New York City, for example, there exists the Provident Relief 
Fund, the trustees of which stand ready to. supply immediately upon the 
request of agents of the Charity Organization Society emergent and 
temporary relief in cases in which relief has to be supplied before it can 
be obtained from other sources. 

“This method of finance was first put on a systematic basis by the 
Philadelphia Society about 1901, through the establishment of a Special 
Appeals Committee. This feature of the society’s work has since been 
widely copied. 


*Roy Smith Wallace, “Field Work for Special Funds,” Charities, Vol. 
XIX, p. 1426 (1908). 


162 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


the necessary money by means of letters or personal visits 
to those whose interest they believe that they may be able 
to enlist in the family in question. In some places the 
committee makes appeals not only to individuals but 
draws into closer cooperation smaller relief agencies such 
as King’s Daughters circles, and church aid societies.! 

Through the case-by-case method a charity organiza- 
tion society utilizes the actual and potential relief that 
is to be found in every community. Such unorganized 
relief has no office or headquarters of its own except 
as the local charity organization society supplies it. 
Moreover, the case-by-case method, though sometimes 
troublesome, has the immense advantage of enforcing 
family ties and neighborly duties instead of relaxing 
them. It is also an effective means of educating the 
giving public in principles of relief. 


From RELIEF SOCIETIES 


There are good historical reasons why a non-relief 
policy was often advisable in the earlier days of the 
movement. When the first charity organization societies 
were formed, “the antagonism of the old relief-giving 
societies was frequently aroused; for the latter thought 
they saw in the new movement a likelihood of the dupli- 
cation of their own efforts, which would be mischievous 
in its influence on the poor, and embarrassing when 
appeals were made to contributors. . . . A charity 
organization society with a relief-fund must necessarily 
compete in its appeals to contributors with other organi- 
zations giving direct relief to the poor. These organiza- 
tions are consequently apt to be jealous of it, and may 
not codperate willingly, either in aiding cases it brings 
to their attention, or in giving to it and obtaining from 
it information of common advantage.” In some newer 


*“Special Fund for Special Cases,” Charities, Vol. XIX, p. 920 (1907). 
7A. G. Warner, “American Charities,” pp. 384-5 (1894). “The result 


3 


-PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 163 


‘and smaller communities relief societies did not exist 


before the founding of the local charity organization 


society. The tendency in such instances was for the new 


organization to acquire a general relief fund. It would 
_have been an advanced position for the time if it had done 


otherwise. 
There are reasons of a serious nature why to-day the 


‘weight of authority is opposed to a charity organization 


‘society maintaining a general relief fund of its own.’ 
Such a relief fund, it is urged, is likely to become a kind 


‘of crutch on which the society is liable to lean instead 


of organizing the charitable resources of the community, 
including those residing in the individual or family to be 


helped.” The existence of a relief fund, it is further main- 
tained, tends to obscure the higher purposes for which 


Charity organization should stand. “If the best societies,” 


writes Dr. Devine, “have kept free to a considerable ex- 
tent from these dangers (perfunctory _ investigation, 
routine relief, etc.), and have constantly renewed the high 


of trying to combine charity organization work with relief giving in 


Philadelphia,’ writes Prof. Lindsay in 1899, “has been a competition 
between the charity organization society and four relief societies which 
have ample funds. The relief societies do not codperate with each other, 
nor with the charity organization society, and it now seems impossible 
to’ arouse any interest in the community sufficient tor support a society 
doing purely charity organization work. So there is much duplication 
and waste of energy and money and the poor are injured rather than 
benefited. Samuel McC. Lindsay, “Problems of Charity Organization 
Workers,” Charities Review, Vol. VIII, p. 522 (1800). 
_*“The sentence, ‘It is not. the business of this Society to*furnish relief, 
but to seek relief for worthy persons,’ should be graven on the minds of 
all. It cannot be too clearly nor too, frequently impressed on the sub- 
scribers, directors, officers and applicants. Experience warrants us in 
Saying that any compromise with this principle is fatal to the largest 
usefulness possible to a Society.” Samuel McCune Lindsay, Charities, 
Vol. II, p. 4 (1809). 

"Robert Treat Paine for years President of the Boston Associated 
Charities, believed that the restriction of their society which forbade 
the giving of alms by visitors resulted in training a body of experts who 


were very skillful in devising other methods of succor. Lend-a-Hand, 
Vol. I, p. 230 (1886). He gives elsewhere three other reasons why 
Visitors must refrain from giving alms: (1) to give wisely requires spe- 


cial training; (2) the best welfare of the poor is the controlling con- 


. sideration; (3) friendly relations are often spoiled by the hope of larger 


alms. 


164 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


standards and the intelligent methods which, at the begin- 
ning, as we have seen, have characterized other move- 
ments for the better organization of charity as well as 
their own, this happy result is due in a very large measure 
to the single fact that they have not themselves directly 
disbursed relief. As an investigating and relief-obtaining 
agency, it is constantly necessary for the C. O. S. ta 
justify its decisions to others to secure their assent and 
win their approval. As an agency for promoting coopera- 
tion it is necessary for the society to appeal strongly and 
convincingly to all branches of the charitable public. It 
has not the temptation to become sentimental, and its 
work can be kept upon a broad basis of common sense, 
honest dealing with facts at first hand, maintaining a due 
proportion between various kinds of charitable needs, and 
shunning those forms of charitable activity which win 
easy but fleeting popularity.”!’? In like vein, Frederic 
Almy writes, ‘“‘Pre-collected relief, or a large relief fund 
which it is easy to dip into, is especially dangerous, and 
leads to lazy work in developing the natural resources oi 
families in need. So far as possible, relief should be 
hand-picked for each family.”? Certainly it is urged in 
some instances, “relatives, employers, or others upon 
whom the applicants have recognized personal claim 
should be given the first opportunity to aid.” # 

A further objection is raised by Miss Richmond, who 

*Edward T. Devine, “Relief and Care of the Poor in Their Homes,’ 
Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 306 (1900). 

7 Amos G. Warner takes a similar stand against relief giving. See his 
“American Charities,” footnote p. 386 (1804). As regards the wisdom 
of encouraging a small society to begin with a pre-collected relief fund, 
the experience of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell 
Sage Foundation and of the American Association of Societies for 
Organizing Charity is instructive. Briefly, the individual society that 
does not follow the general development of the movement in its indi- 
vidual development does not achieve even the beginnings of family 
rehabilitation. From a conference with the Director of the Charity 
Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation, rorq. 

* Frederic Almy, “Constructive Relief,’ The Survey, Vol. XXVU, 
Pp. 1265-1266 (1911). 


*Anon., “Organized Charity at Work: The Massachusetts Tramp,” 
The Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 493 (1901). 


- PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 165 


maintains that there is an “unfortunate psychological 
effect of a large relief fund upon the imaginations of the 


charitable,” which seems ‘‘to be almost as clearly defined 


as is the operation of Gresham’s law in the world of 


' finance and as little capable of being set aside.” 1 If such 


a fund is known to exist in a community, it is contended, 


_ it soon acquires in the popular mind the attribute of 


_ being inexhaustible. Cases requiring charitable assist- 
ance are dismissed from mind by referring them to the 


C. O. S., which is held to exist for ‘just such work.” It 


_is a debatable question whether if this habit of mind is 


created in a community toward its charitable obligations 


| any charity organization society with a general relief fund 


may not sooner or later be swamped by the demands 


_ Made on its treasury. 


The fundamental question raised by this last objection 
is whether relief should be centralized or decentralized, 
whether it should be concentrated at one point or be 
distributed more evenly throughout the community. If 


for example a person has handled a case until he or she 


reaches a point in treatment where twenty dollars is 
needed, such a person should be taught to carry the case 
a step further and raise this fund rather than expect an 
agency to carry all such burdens.’ 


From GENERAL FuNps MAINTAINED By C. O. S. 


The belief that a charity organization society should 
never maintain a general fund has not gone unchallenged. 
It is maintained by those who oppose this view that for 
a community to have a general relief society and a charity 


*M. E. Richmond, “What is Charity Organization?”, Charities Review, 
Vol. IX, p. 493 (1900). 

* During 1914 many charity organization societies throughout the coun- 
try faced deficits ranging from $2,000 to $80,000. In the case of the 
society with the greatest deficit, a large factor in the deficit may have 
been that the entire financial responsibility of cases needing assistance 
has been thrown on it by the community on the plea that it maintains a 
general relief fund. 


166 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


organization society means inevitably a certain amount 
of overlapping of machinery and overhead charges in the 
community’s social equipment. It is urged that it is 
difficult if not impossible to “get the interest and codpera- 
tion of the business men, the people who give,” so long 
as there is a diversity of functions between a charity 
organization society and a relief society. It is claimed 
that a C. O. S., which is an out-and-out relief society, 
gains much more understanding and support in its com- 
munity than is otherwise possible.t It is further main- 
tained that “everything the Charity Organization Society 
aims to accomplish and everything the relief society aims 
to do can be accomplished by one society, which will work 
on a plan of incorporating the good points of both sys- 
tems.” ? Those who question the wisdom of always 


*“Twenty-five Years and After,” Charities and the Commons, Vol. 
». QP. GOG POs Bec fol Minds ef |: 

“Much inadequate relief comes because the money is not in sight,” 
writes Frederic Almy, “and the money is not in sight because of inade- 
quate relief. Why not warm the cockles of the public heart which finds 
us cold?” See article, “Constructive Relief,’ The Survey, Vol. XXVII, 
p. 1266 (1911). 

Mr. Almy’s reasoning seemed to be borne out by the testimony of 
the Orange Society. Writing of it in 1902, Mr. A. W. McDougall says: 
“The relief work done by the Society has distinctly strengthened its 
position in the community. It is safe to say that it never would have 
had the strong hold which it now really has upon the sympathies of 
the people, if it were not that it had shown a readiness to give relief 
when it was necessary. It has avoided all the antagonisms that arise 
from a theoretical discussion of relief giving. People learn by object 
lessons rather than by theoretical discussion.” Charities, Vol. IX, pp. 
336-337 (1902). 

* Discussion by Frank Tucker of a paper on Relief Associations and 
their Relation to Charity Organization Societies, read by Philip W. 
Ayres, Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correction, 
26th session, p. 366 (1889). 

* “Relief-giving was omitted from the work of the first charity or- 
ganization society for special reasons, but the conditions do not seem 
to have made it possible for the societies in the United States to follow 
the original plan with success. The effort to do so has undoubtedly led 
to some confusion of thought and waste of energy. As the prevailing 
methods are so widely at variance with what has generally been con- 
sidered the standard, it would be wise to revise the principles of charity- 
organization societies upon this point to suit locdl conditions and prevent 
harmful misunderstanding. 

“Their real duty consists in impressing upon the minds of the public 
the fact that material relief is only the preliminary step in the process 
of regenerating the individual, a step that under some circumstances 


_ PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 167 


: separating the function relief-giving from all other lines 


_of restorative effort go even further and declare that such 


a division is unnatural and to some extent impracticable. 


“The agency which makes the investigation and under- 


takes the continuous work of bettering the conditions 
found is not only best able to judge of the relief which 
may be necessary but must feel the responsibility of 


_ seeing that the necessary relief is given. The very fact 
that unnecessary relief is deprecated impels the Charity 


Organization Society to see that prompt and adequate 


: relief is given when the necessity for it actually appears, 
and in actual practice it transpires that every charity 
organization society has relief at its disposal either from 


its own funds or from those of some affiliated agency.”? 


Finally it has been asked why, if relief-giving is danger- 
ous, ‘‘should relief societies as such, and their contrib- 


utors, bear all the onus of relief-giving? Why should 
there be the separation between the expenditure of 
material relief and the necessary accompanying treat- 
ment which is entailed by the fact that the relief and 
treatment are given by different and independent 
societies, which may not have a common problem in any 
particular case?” ” 

It is apparent in the arguments here advanced that 
their supporters put aside the fact that much relief is 
to-day raised by the case-by-case method and that more 


need not be taken at all; that constructive work which shall develop 
the individual beyond the need of alms is the supreme aim. It is in 
the emphasis of the latter rather than in the denial of the former func- 
tion that the charity organization society will fulfill its true mission.’ 
C. M. Hubbard, “Relation of C. O. S. to Relief Societies and Relief- 
Giving,” Amer. Jour. Sociology, Vol. VI, pp. 786- 787 (1901). 

*“There are both advantages and disadvantages in depending upon 
the codperation of affiliated agencies for the supply of relief, but the 
disposition of the Detroit Conference was to look upon the choice as 
a matter of local adaptation, and of secondary importance. The matter 
of primary importance is the maintenance of a high standard of pro- 
fessional service in this field of work.” Quotation in text and fore- 
going from a report of The National Conference of Charities and 
Correction of 1902, signed by D. I. G., Charities, Vol. IX, p. 17 (1902). 

*Samuel H. Bishop, “A New Movement in Charity,” Charities, Vol. 


VI, p. 447 (1901). 


168 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


could be, and that further, the belief exists in more than 
one quarter that if a community were to create anew its 
social machinery it would not be the part of wisdom for 
it to create “relief societies.”” Such societies are the 
heritage of the social thinking of an earlier generation. 
It is obvious to the thoughtful student of the movement 
that those who take the former view have the immediate 
needs of the poor uppermost in mind, while those who 
take the position just advanced hold that the fundamental 
principle of the charity organization society is to help the 
poor by the education of the public in wise and adequate 
charitable methods. 

Irrespective of the merits of the questions just raised, 
whether a particular charity organization society to-day 
maintains a general relief fund of its own has depended 
in the main upon the extent to which in the past it could 
obtain relief for its cases from the existing agencies 
of its community. Thus, while relief-giving was omitted 
from the work of nearly all of the first charity organiza- 
tion societies, by 1904, as will later be seen, about 
one-half? of the charity organization societies of the 
country were giving relief from their own funds. Of 
the remaining half some gave relief only in case of great 
emergency; some were the regular channel for such relief; 
still others pursued the case-by-case method, already 
described. 


THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE C. O. S. TO A GENERAL 
RELIEF SOCIETY 


Whenever general relief societies exist in the same 
communities with charity organization societies, inter- 
esting and sometimes difficult questions arise as to the 
relationship that should obtain between the two organ- 
izations. Some have concluded that the most satisfactory 


*Robert W. deForest, “The Federation of Organized Charities,” 
Charities, Vol. XII, p. 21 (1904). 


_ PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 169 


Le 


relation is found when the relief society is relatively 
| passive, not because it must be, but because its confidence 
in the efficiency of the charity organization society makes 
it willing to abide by its acts and follow its advice. To 
those who hold this view, the relief society should ordi- 
narily serve as a repository of a relief fund, much of 
_ which will be expended as the charity organization so- 
_ Ciety’s needs require. Any extension of its activities 
should be along lines not covered by the charity organiza- 
tion society such as fresh air work, savings banks, etc. 
The charity organization society, those who hold this 
' view maintain, should keep to its special task, which is 
_ primarily family planning. This, they argue, is in har- 
mony with progress in all lines of human endeavor, 
namely, ‘differentiation of function.” In spite of the 
foregoing, relief societies that are city wide in operation 
_ have not been willing to accept the réle of relief giving 
alone, with the result that they have either merged in the 
course of time with the local charity organization society 
or taken on the functions of a C. O. S.1 


From Pusric FUNDS 


Because of the rising standards of adequacy in relief, the 
budgets of many societies have increased at an unprece- 


*In Chicago and Baltimore the two societies have been merged. In 
Boston the two societies have existed side by side with apparently 
such close codperation that there is apparently no overlapping in ma- 
chinery. In St. Louis the relief society finally added the functions of 
a charity organization society so that to-day there is but one general 
society in that field. In New York City, the two societies exist side by 
side, involving a minimum but still an inevitable amount of overlapping 
in the social machinery of relief of the community. Until 1900 the 
New York A. I. C. P. supplied material relief for certain cases of the 
N. Y. C. O. S. when the former organization adopted a rule that no 
relief would be given to any family unless it were placed in the sole 
charge of its own relief department. This action compelled the develop- 
ment of other sources of material relief for such cases on the part of 
the Charity Organization Society, and to this extent to the multiplica- 
tion of relief agencies. From the point of view of the Charity Organi- 
zation Society this was regarded “as disorganization of charity—as an 
unfortunate step backwards.” Anon, “The A. I. C. P.,” Charities, 
Vol. VI, p. 20 (1901). 


170 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


dented rate during the last decade. Many societies have 
been forced to face constant deficits. This, along with 
other reasons, has led more than one society to work for 
such measures as Workmen’s Compensation and Health 
Insurance. Such measures will mean a lessening of the 
financial burden now often placed by industry or society 
at large upon charity. Other ways out of the difficulty 
include agitation for more adequate public appropriations 
for widows’ pensions, and a reorganization of public out- 
door relief as a fund to be drawn upon by qualified social 
agencies, in connection with their work. There is, finally, 
the plan found in a few places of state subsidy of private 
agencies, an arrangement, however, often bitterly criti- 
cized.1_ This may be accomplished by supervisors of the 
poor paying to the local charity organization society a 
fixed monthly sum for the support of its work, or as in 
one place, by the city council contracting with three 
private societies, including the charity organization so- 
ciety, to carry on the relief work of the city. The 
overhead costs and general expenses are in this instance 
paid by the city, leaving to each of the three privately 
managed societies the duty of raising for itself from the 
general public any money required for direct relief.” 


FINANCIAL FEDERATIONS 


A word is in order in regard to a method of raising 
funds from private sources that is at present a subject 


*“No private association for organizing charity should receive any 
subsidy from the public funds of the city, county, or state. The very 
breath of life of such an association is the confidence of the community 
in which it works, and it will best keep that confidence only when it 
must look to the community for voluntary support. When a society 
solicits contributions it hears all the complaints that are made about 
itself, and to be compelled to listen to these is the first step either in 
showing its unsoundness or in correcting the faults on which it is 
based.” Amos G. Warner, “Codperation with Public Authorities,” The 
Charities Review, Vol. II, p. 24 (1892). 

* Jessica B. Peixotto, “Reconciling Public and Private Relief,” Sec- 
ond Annual Report of the Municipal Charities Commission, City of 
Los Angeles, Cal., July 1, 1914-July 1, 1915, p. 32. 


_ PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION I7I 


of interest to those both in and outside charity organiza- 
‘tion circles. This is the method of a joint collection of 
' funds for all or nearly all the social agencies of a com- 
munity. The usual arguments for such federations, the 

details of whose organization vary, are that they avoid 
annoyance to business men from many separate solicita- 
_tions, that the collection of funds is easier, and that com- 
“petitive finance is wasteful. Financial federations, it is 
- further urged, result in greater codperation in social work, 

more givers, larger contributions and social education. A 
special committee to study the whole question was 
‘appointed by the American Association for Organizing 
_Charity in 1915. After an exhaustive study of the move- 
ment for city wide financial federations, and an examina- 
_tion of the arguments given above, the committee report- 
_ing in 1917 reached the following conclusion. 


“The abolition of competition in the financing of social 
organizations for the sake of avoiding its waste is as 
attractive a proposition in theory and apparently as log- 

ical as the abolition of competition in business, which is 
championed in part on the same grounds. But in the 
social field, whether we agree or not regarding the eco- 
nomic field, there are spiritual and psychological factors 
which leave doubts as to the ultimate advantage to be de- 
rived from giving up a plan of work which has behind it 
the experience of more than one generation of social 
workers, in order to adopt one which, according to many 
who are in a position to know, is still in its experimental 
stage.” 1 


Since the publication of this report the movement for 
the joint financing of social agencies has taken a number 
of steps forward and many of the earlier objections have 
been successfully answered.’ 

*Financial Federations: The Report of a Special Committee, American 


Association for Organizing Charity, p. 67 (1017). 
*For later developments see pp. 428-436 of this study. 


CHAPTER Va 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE 
UNITED STATES 


THE roots of the charity organization movement in 
America extend deep in the soil of social and economic 
conditions. The industrial revolution had _helped_flood 
America with immigrants. Local workshops gave way to 


factories and mills organized on national lines. The 
centralization of production resulting from the develop- 
ment of steam changed the city from ‘‘a back eddy of 
immigration into an increasingly powerful magnet for 
cheap labor.” By 1884 there had been such an increase 
in urban population that it was estimated that 35% of 
the population in the East was to be found in cities, 15% 
of the population of the West, and 7% of the population 
of the South. 

The influence of such concentration of people on the 
practice of charity is far-reaching. There is no solvent 
of social ties like urban life. Life in the city robs man 
of his natural relation to his fellows. The isolation of 
the poorer and better circumstanced classes prevents the 
easy solution of the poverty problem that is possible in 
more primitive communities where the personal relation- 
ships still exist and the poor and rich attend the same 
churches and partake in large measure uf the same com- 
munity life. The complexity of city life causes the 
individual to be lost in the mass, and it becomes increas- 
ingly difficult for charity to assume the normal channel 


*R. W. Bruere, “The Good Samaritan, Incorporated,’ Harper’s 
Monthly Magazine, Vol. CXX, p. 836 (1910). 
172 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 173 


of personal service and personal gifts common in the 
‘country and smaller towns.!' Moreover, with increasing 
density of population the individual has less and less 
power to control his environment. Escape from the influ- 
ence of neighbors becomes impossible, and as we descend 
the scale of income the degree of interdependence 
becomes greater. Congestion of population aids in the 
spread of vice and infectious disease. There is no 
escape from the ignorance and selfishness of neighbors.’ 

In the light of the foregoing it is not surprising that 

when in 1873 there occurred one of the worst panics and 
‘one of the most protracted periods of industrial depres- 
‘sion in American history, there was created a problem 
of unemployment and suffering unprecedented in extent 
and degree. Multitudes were thrown out of work. Their 
‘ranks were augmented by those soldiers of the Civil War, 
who had not yet found a place in the industrial life of 
the nation. There was an increase of tramps. For the 
first time unemployment as a national problem faced the 
country.* The period proved in many cities the heyday 
of soup kitchens and bread lines, the usual measures first 
adopted by a generous public still untrained in the ex- 
pression of its charitable impulses. 

The extraordinary drafts on the charity of individuals 
and of communities ultimately led to an examination of 
the prevailing methods of relief. This disclosed the fact 
that the methods of charity obtaining were almost incred- 
ibly wasteful and inefficient and led finally to the launch- 
ing in the seventies of a number of charity organization 
societies. The simple old ways of helping the needy of 
colonial America could no longer meet the new needs. 


*Robert W. de Forest, “What is Charity Organization,” The Charities 
Review, Vol. I, p. 4 (1891). 

*For a fuller discussion of this point, see L. F. Rowe, “Problems of 
City Government,” pp. 72-73 (1908). 

*In 1857 New York City witnessed the spectacle for the first time in 
America of American skilled laborers roaming the streets of their city, 
and existing on the free soup of charity. The problem, however, had 
not reached national proportions. 


174 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


Interest in the problem of poverty which the new move- 
ment betokened was part of an awakening general inter- 
est in social problems. In 1865 was launched the Ameri- 
can Social Science Association, the first association of size 
to deal with questions of charity and correction. In range 
of its plan of discussions, which included “the sanitary 
conditions of the people, the relief, employment and edu- 
cation of the poor, the prevention of crime, the ameliora- 
tion of the criminal law, the discipline of prisons and the 
remedial treatment of the insane,” it was a forerunner 
of the National Conference of Social Work.” While there 
were but few national organizations for social betterment 
launched before 1870,? the interest of the American 
people in the decade which saw the birth of the charity 
organization movement, assumed national proportions in 
the important problems of the criminal, the insane, the 
feeble-minded, the licentious, the drunken and the desti- 
tute. The seventies also witnessed the first awakening 
of concern as to public sanitation and the use of leisure by 
boys and young men.* 


*Jeffrey Brackett, “Supervision and Education in Charity,” p. 78 
(1903). 

*The National Conference of Charities and Correction had its formal 
beginning as a subcommittee of the American Social Science Association 
in 1874. It began its independent career in 1878 under the leadership 
of Frank B. Sanborn of Massachusetts, A. E. Elmore of Wisconsin, and 
F. H. Wines of Illinois. In the earlier years it was attended almost 
exclusively by state boards of charities. In 1917 it changed its name 
to the National Conference of Social Work. To-day the conference 
with its membership of some five thousand representatives of all phases 
of social work, and an attendance of three to five thousand at its annual 
meetings has no counterpart in any foreign country. 

* Those still in existence are the American Medical Association, the 
National Education Association and the Superior Council of the Society 
of St. Vincent de Paul. 

*Mary E. Richmond in a pamphlet entitled “The Inter-Relation of 
Social Movements” (p. 2), lists the following national organizations 
then in existence (1910), which date from the decade of the seventies: 
The American Prison Association, the Association of Instructors of 
the Blind, the Public Health Association, the National Conference of 
Charities and Correction, the American Purity Alliance, the National 
W. C. T. U., the American Academy of Medicine, the American Asso- 
ciation for the Study of the Feeble-Minded. and the International 
Y. M. C. A. See Bulletin No. 17, Social Service Series, American 
Unitarian Ass’n. 


A 
. -- 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 175 


- Above all, it should ever be remembered that the 
pioneers of charity organization in America would have 
‘had far to travel to reach the point where they began, 
had not other pioneers on both sides of the Atlantic 
blazed the way and in doing so made substantial con- 
tributions to the fund of knowledge of the scientific 
principles of relief. 

_ There were at least three places in the United States 
‘in which the charity organization movement had almost, 
if not completely independent origins—Germantown, a 
‘suburban ward of Philadelphia, Boston and Buffalo. 
There were other beginnings, but there are evidences that 
they more or less consciously followed in footsteps already 
taken elsewhere in the country. 


THE GERMANTOWN EXPERIMENT 


During the winter of 1873, as a result of the depres- 
sion precipitated by the failure of Jay Cook, of Phila- 
delphia, many of the factories and workshops of the city 
were closed. Continual were the calls at the back doors 
of the well-to-do for food, money and help. The year 
previous there had come to the charge of the Unitarian 
church of Germantown one Charles Gordon Ames, who 
had already read the writings of Thomas Chalmers and 
Octavia Hill, and who was familiar with the. reported 
experiences of the Elberfeld system of poor relief. ‘‘So,” 
writes Alice Ames Winter, in describing the origin of the 
Germantown society, ‘when Samuel Emlin, one of the 
noblest of Germantown’s friends, through the German- 
town Chronicle, asked for a gathering of all citizens of 
the borough who were concerned ‘to provide for the poor 
of Germantown during the coming winter,’ the new Uni- 
_tarian pastor went, with a plan in his pocket of districting 
the Twenty-second Ward of Philadelphia (namely, Ger- 
mantown) into eight divisions, and the appointment of 
Visiting committees of citizens to each division. There 


176 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


should be a central office and a paid superintendent, who 
should receive all applicants and notify the visitors of 
each case in his or her portion of the borough; there 
should be a board of directors, and of visitors, monthly 
meetings of both, and constant communication. No relief 
in money or material should be given except in emer- 
gencies; but for every one, worthy and unworthy, there 
should be the help of active friendliness. 

No one else came with a plan, but only with vague 
notions of what could be done. It needed but the presen- 
tation of the definite scheme of action to insure Samuel 
Emlin’s hearty approval and its immediate adoption.”* 
. A public meeting was then called, largely attended, anc 
the Germantown Relief Society, the first society for organ- 
izing Charity of the United States was launched.’ 

The new association utilized volunteer household 
visitors, each of whom it assigned to cover a definite 
territory. It was their function to investigate and be- 
friend all applicants for aid found within their respective 
territories. The association ‘‘availed itself of the soup- 
houses, fuel societies, churches, and especially of the out- 
door municipal relief in procuring the requisite assistance, 
and supplemented it as need indicated from its own 
resources.” ? The Germantown experiment emphasized 
volunteer service and codperation—the codperation being 
in the main between such volunteers and the families 


*Alice Ames Winter, editor ‘Charles Gordon Ames: A _ Spiritual 
Autobiography,” pp. 191-192 (1913). 

*Some of the earlier reports of the Charity Organization Society of 
New York City refer to Rev. Charles G. Ames as “the originator 
of C. O. work in the country.” See the Sixth Annual Report of this 
society, 1888, p. 99. Both Mr. Ames and his wife, Fanny B. Ames, 
were later active in helping to organize the charities of Springfield, 
Mass., and of Philadelphia. An address of Mr. Ames, “Wisdom in 
Charity,” was printed and had a large run. Mrs. Ames while a resident 
of the State of Pennsylvania was the chief advocate of the removal 
-of children from the almshouses of the state. She was also one of the 
founders of the Children’s Aid Society of Pennsylvania. ; 

*William D. P. Bliss, “The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform,” p. 
220 (1908). 


\ 
i 
\' BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 177 


' helped and their friends, since there existed at the time in 
/ Germantown almost no social agencies, except those 
‘mentioned. As the aid societies of the churches had 
‘no idea of charity except as alms-giving, which was con- 
‘fined in each case to the church administering it, the new 
association proved a big step in advance over any method 
"previously devised in Germantown, or for that matter, in 
ui Philadelphia for handling the problem of relief. 

It is of interest to note that while the Germantown 
Relief Society was modelled after the methods of the 
| London Society,” its form of organization shows distinct 
‘traces of the influence that the Elberfeld system of poor 
telief had exerted on the mind of its founder. This is 

seen most clearly in its use of the German “space” sys- 
‘tem of assigning visitors to definite territories as opposed 

to the “case” system of assigning tasks to volunteers 

‘which has characterized the subsequent development of 
_the movement for organizing charity in this country. 





| a <n mm 





ABORTIVE BEGINNINGS IN New York 


In the same year as the “Germantown Experiment” a 
Bureau of Charities was formed in New York City, of 
which Mr. Henry E. Pellew was chief promoter and sec- 
retary, that proposed to register persons receiving outdoor 
relief, either from the city, benevolent societies, or indi- 

viduals. Many of the charitable institutions of the city 
responded favorably to the plans of the bureau, but the 
scheme was frustrated the next year by the refusal of 
others quite influential, including the largest relief-giving 
society in the city, to codperate, although thousands of 

* Philadelphia did not establish its Society for Organizing Charity until 

1878. This was after societies had been launched in Buffalo and New 
Haven, and substantial progress had been made toward the creation of 
such a society in Boston. 

* Charles E. Cadwalader, “Organization of Charities in Cities,’ Pro- 


ceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correction,. ae se 
pp. 100 and tor (1881). 


178 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


persons were known to be living at the time in the city as 
impostors, “by misdirected charity largely.” 4 


BEGINNINGS IN BOSTON 


The next development of the movement occurred in 
Boston, where the fire of 1872 and the crisis of 1873, with 
its subsequent years of depression, had called forth a 
fund of charitable spirit. Dr. Charles P. Putnam with 
others founded in 1873 the Boston Society for the Relief 
of Destitute Mothers and Infants, which was a pioneer in 
establishing the policy of keeping mother and child to- 
gether. In the autumn of 1875 the Cooperative Society of 
Volunteer Visitors among the Poor was formed on a plan, 
a modification of the Elberfeld system as proposed by 
Octavia Hill for London after she had studied the plan 
of von der Heydt.* No visitor was to have more than 
four families at a time. Lists of families were obtained 
from a physician from among the families he met in his 
capacity of volunteer almoner for the Boston Provident 
Association. The society operated in the “North End” 
of Boston only. Later a similar society was founded in 
East Boston.? As time went on, the need of such a so- 
ciety and its extension all over the city was more and 
more plainly seen. This growing realization of the need 
of unifying the charitable work of Boston paved the way 
for the organization of an Associated Charities that would 
embrace the city. 


* Jeffrey R. Brackett, “Supervision and Education in Charity,” p. 149 
(1903). 

*Miss Zilpha D. Smith stated in person to the author that in 1875 
descriptions of the Elberfeld system had reached Boston and also some 
of the papers by Miss Octavia Hill, of London. Miss Hill urged the 
organization of a group of volunteer visitors with an honorary secre- 
tary to act in codperation with private relief agencies. Miss Smith says 
owing to the inspiration from these two sources, but chiefly from Miss 
Hill’s own words and work, Boston began to organize friendly visiting. 

°It was later merged in the East Boston Conference of the Associated 
Charities. 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 179 


In the spring of 1876 a group of volunteer workers 
decided to start a Registration Bureau in which they 
could enter the names of all the families being aided by 
charity and the amount of relief that they were receiving. 
Delegates from the various agencies came together to 
discuss the plan and, after expressing their approval, 
elected a committee to carry on the work. Mr. Pellew, of 


_whose work in New York City mention has just been 
made, gave valued help to those interested in Boston. 


A small amount of money was raised, and one of the 


_ volunteers interested undertook in the fall of that year to 
do the work for a nominal salary. A good start was 
_ made: the cooperation of several of the largest societies 
and of the Overseers of the Poor was secured. In the 
Meantime the Buffalo Charity Organization Society, 
_ which next is to claim our attention, had been launched 


and was perfecting its plans of organization. After a 
year and a half the worker in charge of the Registration 
Bureau was obliged to give up the work. Because of this, 
and in view of a larger enterprise in the nature of an 


_ Associated Charities then under discussion, the work of 





the Bureau was abandoned the spring of 1878. 


THE BUFFALO SOCIETY 


The first city in the United States to claim a city- 
wide charity organization society was Buffalo, whose 
society dates from 1877. ‘The influence of the London 
Society was both marked and direct. Shortly before the 
financial crisis of 1873, there had moved to Buffalo an 
English clergyman, the Rev. S. H. Gurteen, who had 
formerly been associated with the Charity Organization 
Society of London. The distress incident to the crisis of 


_ 273 was apparent on all sides in Buffalo. With a view to 


correcting the lavish abuse of charity apt to take place 


/ under such circumstances, Mr. Gurteen had preached a 


-¥ 


j 


180 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


series of sermons which was afterwards published in 
pamphlet form under the title of ““Phases of Charity.” } 
These discourses had been largely attended, and ulti- 
mately had led to the reéstablishment of the Guild of his 
church (St. Paul’s) on much better lines than had 
formerly existed. Under his inspiration it had become a 
very active force in the community. Alms and advice 
were freely given not only to members of St. Paul’s 
Church and to members of the Episcopal communion, but 
to any one in need who proved to be “deserving” after 
investigation. This aid was given with no attempt at 
proselytization, and greatly broadened the conception of 
charity in Buffalo. 

In the winter of 1876 Mr. Gurteen’s duties in connec- 
tion with this Guild had brought him into close contact 
with the poor of Buffalo. He soon discovered that “ 
spite of all that was being done in the way of so-called 
charity in the city of Buffalo, pauperism was steadily 
on the increase. The most truly deserving were those 
who did not seek, and, therefore, very often did not get 
relief. The pauper, the impostor, and the fraud of every 
description were carrying off at least one-half of all 
charity, public and private, and hence there was a con- 
stant and deplorable waste in the alms-fund of the city.” ? 
Not long after this, an enthusiastic little band led by Mr, 
Gurteen launched the Buffalo Charity Organization 
Society (December, 1877).° 


*“Phases of Charity,” lectures embracing the following subjects: 
Pauperism and Charity, Charity and the Iudividual, Charity and the 
Home, Charity and Society, Charity and the Church. In the second 
edition, there were added to the above, “The proposed constitution 
of the charity organization society of Buffalo adopted Dec. 11, 1877,” and 
“suggested rules for the direction of the district committees, adopted by 
the council, Jan. 17, 1878. Char. Rev., Vol. VIII, p. 367 (1898). 

f= Humphreys Gurteen, ‘Beginning of Charity Organization in Amer- 
ica,” Lend-a-Hand, Vol. XIII, P. 355 (1894). 

* Discussing the foundi: ng of the Buffalo Society, the Rev. S. H. Gurteen 
writes: “The Elberfeld plan had been described in the magazines and 
by the press of the country, and had thus acquired celebrity, although 
few, if any, of those who had given attention to the subject imagined 
for a single moment that the Westphalian plan could be naturalized in 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. I81 


The new society followed the district plan of organiza- 
tion, dividing the city into eight districts, corresponding 
with the police precincts. District offices were opened in 
residences near the center of the district ‘‘so that there 
_ should be no taint of officialism about the work, but that 

the poor might come to a real ome, with home surround- 
_ ings and thus be, perhaps unconsciously, bettered by the 

pontact.”’ * 

Each district had its District Committee, composed 
exclusively of men, “for this is especially a man’s 
work,” ? and a corps of friendly visitors, in which 

' service every effort was bent to interest the better cir- 
cumstanced, especially the women of the district. The 
society was pledged to administer no relief funds of its 
own. Its plan of treatment therefore consisted largely in 
bringing the “rich into such close relations with the poor 
as cannot fail to have a civilizing and healing influence.’ 
It was maintained that such relations would “long knit all 
classes together in the bonds of mutual help and good 
will,” and that “everything else” would follow.® 

As to the number of families per visitor, the society 
held no hard and fast rule, but expressed itself as believ- 
ing that “the most effective work is done when one, and 
only one, family is assigned to each visitor.” © The society 


SS ee eee ee 


- our own country. It was accordingly determined by some of our public- 
spirited men to introduce in the city of Buffalo the plan which had 
proved to be so effective in the great English metropolis; such minor 
changes being made as would adapt it to the institutions and habits of 
thought of our own people.” S. H. Gurteen, “Handbook of Charity 
Organization,” pp. 58, 59 (1882). 

*To save expense some of the districts were combined so that instead 
of eight there were but practically four. Jbid., p. 127. 

*Ibid., p. 127. In this one sees the settlement idea. The fact that 
Buffalo afterward abandoned the plan and that it has never been copied 
as far as the author knows, is doubtless due to the fact that it puts too 
great a strain on the agent, making his a day and night job much more 
taxing than settlement life because all the families with whom he deals 
are in distress. 

*Tbid., p. 186. 

In most cities men and women have worked together, 

S1b1d., Dp. 39. 

efbid., Pp. 30. 

* Ibid., p. 180. 


— 
-? 


182 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


was never able to reach this standard, but where it was 
tried the secretary wrote that whereas visitors had 
formerly become thoroughly tired of constant visiting, 
with little, if any beneficial results, under the “one family” 
system, the work became “a fascination” and the duty 
rendered ‘‘a positive pleasure.” ! 

A striking aspect of launching the new society 
was the spirit of codperation and good will that existed 
on all sides. One reason for this may have been the 
absence in Buffalo of any general relief society such as 
had been founded in many of the principal cities of 
America during the A. I. C. P. movement of the forties. 
Perhaps a more complete explanation lies in the fact 
that those launching the new society let it be distinctly 
understood that the scheme which they advocated was 
simply an organization of existing local charities, that it 
did not aim at destroying their individualities or abridging 
in any way their operations, that each would retain its 
autonomy intact, while its usefulness would be enhanced 
by coéperation with other institutions. 4 


ene mae A 


of ‘the new organization. First it was laid down as funda- 


mental that the society should recognize in its opera- 


_tions all forms of religious belief, all political affiliations — 
_and all nationalities. All cases were to be treated impar-_ 
_tially. The greater liberality of religious thought then 
beginning to obtain made it natural that the charity 
organization movement should from the outset emphasize 
_its_ non-sectarian character and _ affirmatively repudiate 
any attempt at proselytism.® Secondly, ily, the society made 


*S. H. Gurteen, “Handbook of Charity,’ p. 180. ' Miss Zilpha D. 
Smith after years of experience with friendly visitors stated to the 
author that the one family plan does not yield the best results since 
it is not sufficiently educational to the visitor. 

* Ibid., pp. 49, 50. 

*To guard against any possible tendency toward sectarianism, no 
clergyman was elected to the Council of the new society. “The control 
of the Society should never be in the hands of the clergy. The Society 
affords ample opportunities for clerical codperation apart from the direc- 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 183 


_it_a fundamental principle never to give relief in any 


shape whatsoever, unless in very exceptional cases. After 
the society had investigated a case it referred it for relief 
to any benevolent association, religious or secular, or to 
an individual citizen according to the nature of the prob- 
lem. The society, “as a Society, i.e., in the persons of its 
Council, District Committees, Agents and Volunteer 
Visitors in each and every part of its work, was to ignore 
all questions of this nature.” 1 To do otherwise it was felt 
“would inevitably bring the Society’s career to a speedy 
and ignominious ending.” ? It, unlike other pioneer so- 
cieties, took the position that it had nothing to do with 
the administration. ion of relief, but that its functions were 
simply offering “its services for | investigation. ag 
As the formation of the new organization had been 
furthered by a number of public-spirited citizens * who 
had become aroused to the necessity of reforming the 
methods of administering the municipal relief of Buffalo, 
_ it is not surprising that the new society early entered upon 
a crusade for the reduction of public outdoor relief. The 
society maintained that municipal relief should be given 
in institutions only, and that outdoor relief, or relief to 
the poor in their homes, should be left to private charity. 
This was partly because indoor or institutional relief was 
felt to be less open to fraudulent use, and partly because 





tion of its affairs.’ Gurteen, “Handbook of Charity Organization,” p. 
123 (1882). 

* Gurteen, “Handbook of Charity Organization,” p. 121 (1882). 

sibids p. 129. 

e1bid: ‘Dp. 52. 

*While S. H. Gurteen may justly be called the founder of the Buffalo 
Charity Organization Society since he furnished the idea and inspira- 
tion, the credit of putting the society on a practical working basis 
belongs to a small but active group of public-spirited men of whom 
T. Guilford Smith deserves special mention. See note by Editors of 
Charities Review appended to article on Stephen Humphreys Gurteen, 
by T. Guilford Smith, Charities Review, Vol. VIII, p. 365 (1808). 

°Five groups only were, according to Gurteen, entitled to official 
indoor relief: (1) Orphans (half or whole); (2) The Aged; (3) The 
Insane; (4) The Incurably Sick; (5) The Crippled. Sis Gurteen, 
“Handbook of Charity Organization,” p. 136 (1882). 


184 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


it was believed that a public relief fund had a bad psycho- 
logical effect on the poor. It was felt that it created in 
them a feeling of a right to it which led them to fling 
themselves upon it without thrift.1. In its crusade for 
the reduction of public outdoor relief, the new society 
endeavored to gain not only the cooperation of min- 
isters, lawyers, bankers, merchants and all other influ- 
ential citizens, but also of the officers of the various 
charitable institutions of the city and the Poor-Law 
officials. It secured permission to copy the books of 
their office and entered upon a plan of active codperation 
with the Poor Department of the city government 
whereby it investigated all the outdoor relief given by the 
Poor Department and transmitted to the Overseer of the 
Poor its findings and recommendations. Decisions, how- 
ever, did not rest on the findings of the society alone. The 
Overseer of the Poor and the officers of the police force 
were required to inquire separately into the actual wants 
of such persons as appeared to need assistance. It was 
felt that these three methods of inquiry ought to act “as 
checks upon each other” and “greatly lessen the risk of 
favoritism in the distribution of relief.” That this belief 
was in part justified is shown by the fact that in three 
years’ time the society was instrumental in reducing 
city outdoor relief from $100,636 to $28,295 per annum.” 
In four years’ time it accomplished a total saving to the 
taxpayer in the single item of public outdoor relief of 
$133,500.2 The evidence does not show that there re- 
sulted any material increase in suffering among the poor, 
but that “nearly one-third of the applicants for relief” + 

*For a fuller discussion of the objections to public outdoor relief see 
A. G. Warner, “American Charities,” pp. 167-175 (1894). The relation 
between public and private charity is discussed in the seventeenth 
chapter of this book. 

* Frederic Almy, “Relief,” a pamphlet published by the Charity Or- 
ganization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation, p. 25 (1910). 

* Charles D. Kellogg, “Reports and Papers of the Charity Organiza- 
tion Society of New York City,” No. 4 (1882). 


*The Annual message of the Mayor of Buffalo for the year 1879, see 
Gurteen, “Handbook of Charity Organization,” p. 62 (1882). 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 185 


were not in need of it. There was thus not only achieved 
a marked saving to the taxpayer, but also a saving in 
the reduction of the demoralizing results that always 
accompany indiscriminate relief. 

Beside its work of detecting fraud and driving beggars 
from the streets and its work for the so-called “honest 
poor,” the Buffalo Society soon added two other lines of 
work. One was the establishment of various “well- proved 


ee Ren oan ee a RE 


schemes for the encouragement of thrift and self-help,” 


and the other “the suppression of social abuses.” 
Preparatory to carrying out the first of these, Mr. 


Gurteen made a trip to Europe in the summer of 1878 for 
the especial purpose of studying in detail the Provident 
Dispensaries, the Penny Bank system, the Model Dwel- 
lings of the Poor, the Workingmen’s Clubs, the Day 
Nurseries of London and the famed Créche system of 
France, especially of Paris. On his return to Buffalo he 
delivered a second course of lectures at St. Paul’s Cathed- 
ral during the latter months of 1878, explanatory of the 
various provident schemes of London which had been put 
in operation either at the suggestion of the Charity Organ- 
ization Society or independently, but with the full ap- 
proval of its executive council. 

Because there was scarcely a week that did not dis- 
close ‘“‘cases of distress arising from the fact that the 
mother, who is able and willing to work and has work 
offered, is reduced to begging simply because she has no 
one to take a loving care of her little ones,” the new 
society launched a plan in the fall of 1879, which resulted 
the year following in the establishment of the Fitch 
Créche.? In little more than a year it afforded ‘food, 
shelter and first steps in their secular education to over 
three thousand little ones,” * the children of mothers 
whose circumstances had been investigated and found 








*S. H. Gurteen, “Handbook of Charity Organization,” p. 180 (1882). 

Named for Mr. Benjamin Fitch of New York City, who gave the 
house and grounds occupied by the Créche. 

*S. H. Gurteen, “Handbook of Charity Organization,” p. 92. 


186 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


to be unable to earn sufficient for their support apart 
from such aid. 

While the Créche was considered the most important 
among the provident schemes which the society set on 
foot, it was not without rivals. The year 1881 saw the 
establishment of the Provident Woodyard, which was to 
continue as an activity of the society for thirteen years. 
The Woodyard offered a “work-test,’ which was char- 
acterized by the head of the society as “the most perfect 
touchstone for discriminating between the deserving and 
undeserving that has ever been devised.” 4 

By 1882 it seems fair to state that the Buffalo Society 
had gained the confidence of the community as a demon- 
strated success. It had been instrumental in cutting 
down the amount of public outdoor relief to an appreci- 
able extent. It had aided in improving the conditions 
of life and work of the grain shovellers of the city. Lastly, 
it had accomplished an almost entire suppression of street 
and house-to-house begging, and had improved “the con- 
dition of the worthy poor by friendly visiting and by the 
employment of over one thousand applicants.? 


THE New Haven SOCIETY 


New Haven, Connecticut, was next to organize its 
charity (May 23, 1878). The need for such a step, as 
elsewhere, grew out of the unprecedented extent of unem- 
ployment which obtained during the long industrial de- 
pression following the crisis of 1873. The difficulty of 
finding work in New Haven was so great that in May of 
' 1878 a meeting of some 400 unemployed was held on the 
steps of the old State House on the Green, in order to peti- 
tion the Common Council to supply them with work. 
Three social agencies of the city, the City Missionary 


*S. H. Gurteen, “Handbook of Charity Organization,” p. 31. 
* Charles D. Kellogg, “Reports and Papers of C. O. S. of New York 
City,” No. 4 (1882). 


a A 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 187 


Society, the Aid Society and the United Workers con- 
ceived the idea, apparently independently and simulta- 
neously, that some definite steps must be taken to meet the 
situation. These three societies thereupon joined forces 
with three others, and thereupon launched the Organized 
Charities Association, a federation of the six, which from 
time to time thereafter was enlarged by the inclusion of 
still other social agencies.‘ More important, however, 
was the fact that soon after its organization the activities 
of the association went far beyond its original purpose 
of meeting an emergency problem of unemployment. It 
soon took on the routine functions of a charity organiza- 
tion society and so becomes a part of the story of the 
early days of the organization of charity in this country.” 


THE PHILADELPHIA SOCIETY FOR ORGANIZING CHARITY 


In the city of Philadelphia in 1878 there existed no 
less than 270 voluntary organizations for the aid of the 
suffering and needy, besides 547 religious congregations, 
each of which recognized some obligation to care for the 
poor. The amount of money raised by these various 
benevolent societies and churches was estimated at 
$1,546,0409.98. Scores of societies had “little knowledge 


of each other’s work and liable at any time to see new 


competitors for public patronage spring up about them, 
anxious each about its income, duplicating machinery to 
work at cross purposes, most of them too local, sectarian 
or obscure to command the confidence and support of all 
the community.* On the 18th of February, 1878, a cir- 


7In 1881 the Hebrew Benevolent Society and the office of the town ' 
agent which handled the public outdoor relief were included. In 1884 
the Protestant Industrial Association and the Grand Army of the Re- 
public were added. By 10903 the federation claimed a membership of 
thirteen regular societies. 

*Francis Wayland was one of the organizers and for twenty-five years 
president of the association. 

*D. O. Kellogg, “On Organization of Charity in Philadelphia,” The 
Penn Monthly, Vol. IX, p. 709 (1878). 

*Ibid., p. 716. 


188 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


cular appeared, signed by twenty-six citizens, many of 
whom were identified with the soup societies of Phila- 
delphia, asking for a conference of citizens the first of 
March “‘to discuss, and, if possible, determine on a method 
by which idleness and beggary, now so encouraged, may 
be suppressed, and worthy, self-respecting poverty be dis- 
covered and relieved at the smallest cost to the bene- 
volent.” 1 A general meeting of managers and trustees 
of charitable enterprises of the city was called for March 
1st, at which time a committee embracing representatives 
of all the leading charities of the city was appointed to 
consider and report on the whole subject.” 

The committee’s report was laid before a general meet- 
ing of citizens in June of the same year. One of the 
reasons given why a radical reform in the general admin- 
istration of all relief agencies was needed was the ineffici- 
ency and corruption which pervaded the city outdoor 
relief as distributed by the official visitors of the guar- 
dians of the poor. \ 

The committee recommended the establishment of a 
central agency through which all the public and private | 
charities of the city might work for mutual protection, 
economy and efficiency. The new agency was to help not | 
to hinder or supplant. It was not to administer all the | 
charity of Philadelphia but to help systematize the charity — 
given according to a knowledge of the needs of each | 

* First Annual Report of the Central Board to the Philadelphia Society 


for Organizing Charitable Relief and Repressing Mendicancy, p. 6 (Oct: 
1 1870): 

*The committee included Joshua L. Baily, Rudolph Blankenburg, 
Philip C. Garrett, Thomas S. Harrison, Wm. W. Justice, Chas. Spencer 
and James A. Wright. Philip C. Garrett was chairman of the well- 
known Committee of One Hundred interested in good government and 
the redemption of the city from the control of James M. Manes and 
the “Gas Trust Ring.” Rudolph Blankenburg, also a member of the 
Committee of One Hundred, was later mayor of the city. 

It is interesting to note that the founder of the Buffalo society was 
asked to visit Philadelphia when the new society was first thought of 
to advise and council with those interested in its formation. Mr. 
Charles G. Ames, the father of the “Germantown Experiment,” was 
among those who were active in the formative period of the society’s 
existence. 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 189 


helped and with the aim of eventual self-support ever in 
mind. A constitution and a provisional organization was 
set on foot. Thus came into existence the Philadelphia 
Society for Organizing Charitable Relief and Repressing 
Mendicancy, which name was later shortened to the 
Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charity. 

In addition to following the London form of title, the 
new society followed very closely the decentralized plan 
of organization of the London society.t' A separate asso- 
ciation was formed in almost every ward of the city, and 
it was planned that the society as a whole should be 
managed by delegates from these ward associations. 
Each ward association was to have an _ independent 
treasury supported by residents of the ward, who were 
also expected to give their personal service in the relief 
and cure of distress. The new society was dominated 
by the idea of reproducing in each of the thirty wards 
of the city a complete association like that existing 
in Germantown. The form of organization was the 
extreme of local self-government. It was based on the 
belief that the best way to get families out of their 
troubles was first to devise a wise plan and then, have 
the charitable forces of each neighborhood pull together 
in carrying out the plan in order that the work could 
be done at close range. That Philadelphia should have 
followed the London plan of organization rather than 
the Buffalo one where the work was centralized, though 
carried out through district offices, was due in large 
measure to the fact that Philadelphia preserved to a 
greater extent than most other large American cities of 
the time, a feeling of local responsibility in the several 
one-time independent communities that made up the city. 
In the seventies many wards of the city were true social 


* This is still the London plan. It has been abandoned everywhere in 
the United States. Philadelohia began to change its plan in 1901. In 
London the various methods of helpfulness of the central council to 
the various committees and the strong work that the council has 
always done have helped to solidify that form of organization and to 
unify the work of the society. 


Igo CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


units, with the rich and poor of the neighborhood in visible 
relationship. In three and a half years the city was 
entirely covered by the district branches of the society. 
The system of district committees with local self-govern- 
ment, even in the collection and disbursement of funds, 
soon became known throughout C. O. S. circles as the 
“Philadelphia plan.” 1 

The Philadelphia society followed the London society 
in still another matter, in that it was a relief-giving as 
well as a relief-obtaining society. There was, however, 
on the part of many of the local leaders in the movement 
a strong opposition to the society holding a relief fund of 
its own. Part of the opposition seems to have been due 
to the jealousies which unhappily existed in the manage- 
ment of many of the old relieving agencies of the city. 

The new society also encountered the jealousy of ‘“‘the 
political dispensers of the official relief from the city 
treasury, who resented interference with so profitable an 
instrument of political patronage; and professional poli- 
ticlans began to devise means to strangle the reform at 
its birth. To crush the pretensions of the new society 
that, by a better adjustment and coordination of all 
public‘and private charity, the claims and needs of the 
dependent classes could be more adequately and econom- 
ically met, it leaked out that it was in the following year 
(1879) determined by its enemies to suspend the twelve 
paid visitors, who were the dispensers of the $50,000 to 
$75,000 previously annually appropriated to the over- 
seers of the poor for outdoor relief, and to take the new- 
born enterprise at its word, and to throw upon it the 
whole burden of relieving those who for years had applied 
to the city for coal, groceries, etc., and had received doles 
from the visitors. The new society got to work in 
November, 1878, and the following year the city’s winter 
budget cut off all customary provision for the city out- 

*For reasons why the Philadelphia plan failed see pp. 283, 284. 


* To-day the London and Philadelphia societies, though having relief 
funds, do a very lagge part of their work on the special case system. 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. IQI 


_ door relief, and citizens were requested to refer all appli- 
cants for relief, not otherwise provided for, to the new 
society, which bravely undertook the burden. It was 
urged that such a change would increase the suffering 
among the poor, would swamp the voluntary relief 
societies, and, by filling the almshouse to overflowing, 
would increase the expenses of the indoor departments 
of the guardians of the poor far beyond the amount which 
would be saved by abolishing the outdoor relief.”! Far 
different results followed. There was no great increase 
in the demands made for relief on the private societies 
and the population of the almshouse actually decreased.’ 
Whether the reason for abolishing outdoor relief in Phila- 
delphia was that of economy or some other, certain it is 
that the change was made at the direct request of the 
society, and as the result of sentiment against outdoor 
relief created by direct agitation. Philadelphia thus 
became the first large city in America to abolish public 
outdoor relief. 

In November of 1879 the Philadelphia society began 
the publication of a Monthly Register which contained 
news of the work not only in Philadelphia, but also else- 
where. The Register, published for twenty years, thus 
became the pioneer of a series of journals launched later 
in New York and Chicago in the interest of social and 
civic work culminating in The Survey. 

At the same time the society made provision in its 
by-laws for an organization known as the ‘‘Assembly,” 
which was to include within its membership, in addition 
to its own members, many of the official boards of the 
city and county of Philadelphia, such as the Board of 
Health and Inspectors of the County Prison, etc., and 
_ representatives of such societies as should be admitted to 


*E. T. Devine, “Public Outdoor Relief,’ Charities Review, Vol. VIII, 
PP. 190-191 (1898). 

“Ella F. Harris, “Charity Functions of the Pennsylvania County,” 
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 
mel VII; ps 169.(1913). 


IQ2 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


cooperation. It thus became a permanent “committee 
of the whole.” The work of the Assembly was carried 
on by means of the following ten committees usually of 
fifteen persons each. 


. Visitation and Women’s Work. 

. Employment. 

. Means of Promoting Provident Habits. 

. Medical Charities. 

Education and Care of Dependent Children. 
Care of Defective Classes. 

Hygiene, Sanitary Measures, etc. 

. Penal and Reformatory Institutions. 

. Legal Protection of the Poor. 

. Pauperism and Vagrancy and their Causes. 


00 CON AM RW DND EH 


Lame | 


The monthly meeting of the Assembly, which convened 
for a number of years, served as an open forum for the 
discussion of charitable and community problems and 
exercised a wide influence on the social spirit of the city. 
Inside views of work of various agencies of the city were 
given with mutual benefit. Committees were appointed 
to make special studies of important subjects, some of 
which resulted in practical reforms. Much stimulus to 
efforts to improve child welfare work is traceable to these 
meetings. ‘The Assembly was in short a forerunner of 
the Centra! Council of Social Agencies which began to 
develop throughout the country beginning in 1908. In 
1881 the Public Education Association + of Philadelphia 
was established as an outgrowth of the society’s work. 
The need of more adequate provision for wise and human 
dealing with deserted children, enforced by the reports 
which came in from many of the ward associations, led 
to the organization the year following of the Children’s 
Aid Society and Bureau of Information, to which the 
society gave a room in connection with the central office. 
Within six months’ time about 180 children, destitute or 


*Now Public Education and Child Labor Association. 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 193 


abandoned or worse, were placed in selected homes, 
mostly in the country. The new society thus became a 
great aid to the work of its ward and district associations 
in their handling of broken families. 

While the yearly saving to the taxpayers of from 
$50,000 to $75,000 formerly spent on outdoor relief had 
been an important achievement, it was by no means the 
only thing by which the new organization was gaining in 
these early years the confidence of the community. At 
the end of its third year the society had upon its records 
“over 1,100 families of not less than 4,000 persons, who, 
having been chronic paupers, with all the debasement the 
name implies, had been, by the friendly ministrations of 
its men and women, raised into conditions of self-respect 
and self-support.”! The city was reported at the time as 
comparatively free from street begging, and the blind 
application of charity had been greatly reduced. By the 
close of the period under review the society claimed “a 
strong central organization aiding the local associations 
and maintaining uniformity and discipline throughout the 
-whole.”? The city was probably more thoroughly dis- 
tricted than any other at the time. Its local associations 
were headed by committees employing paid superintend- 
ents, who were assisted by volunteer friendly visitors. 
Moreover, the society had been able to influence improve- 
ments in the administration of the city charitable and 
correctional institutions, and the community had been 
aroused to studying methods of charity to an extent 
before unknown. 


THE BROOKLYN BUREAU OF CHARITIES 


The next place to organize its charity was Brooklyn, 
New York. Mr. Seth Low, a public spirited citizen of 


* Charles D. Kellogg, “Reports and Papers,” CO. S. of N. Y. C., June, 
1882, No. 4. 

*Dr. J. W. Walk, “Report of the Philadelphia Society for Organizing 
Charity,” Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correction, 
roth session, p. 124 (1883). 


194 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


Brooklyn,’ had by chance been present at the inaugura- 
tion of the Buffalo society. The conditions in Brooklyn 
were so similar to those that had called the Buffalo society 
into existence that, in the latter part of the year following 
(1878), Mr. Low invited to his home a few gentlemen 
who with him took the initial steps which soon afterwards 
resulted in the formation of the Brooklyn Bureau of 
Charities. Prominent among the organizers besides Mr. 
Low was Mr. Alfred T. White.2. They had as staunch 
supporters of the enterprise many who had served as 
volunteer visitors for the public outdoor relief of the 
city. 

Small public doles to the poor which baal begun in 
Brooklyn without warrant of law about 1850 had grown 
by 1870 into a system under which nearly one-tenth of 
the population of Brooklyn received each winter weekly 
rations from public storehouses in different parts of the 
city. A more demoralizing system cannot be easily 
imagined. “At the distributing offices on relief days,” 
writes a contemporary, “hundreds of women could be seen 
waiting possibly half a day to receive their weekly doles. 
The amount thus distributed averaged about $130,000 in 
value each winter, a sum fully three times the total of 
the annual relief supplied by private almsgiving societies. 
During this time all forms of private charity were ham- 
pered and dwarfed. ‘The press of the city united to 
condemn the system, but its entrenchments were strong. 
It was the very magnitude of the evils resulting from the 


*Mr. Low afterward became President of Columbia University and 
Mayor of New York City. 

?Mr. White had already been interested in providing model tenements 
for working people. He had made private investments in this line. He 
succeeded so well that he induced other members of his own family to 
cooperate in the work. The result was one of the most satisfactory ~ 
demonstrations that had been made in this country of the financial suc- 
cess which may attend this form of philanthropy. See Lend-a-Hand, ~ 
Vol. XVI, p. 128 (1896). These first model tenements of Brooklyn 
gave impulse to the great tenement house reform movement of 1879. 
The first tenement regulation ever made in the State of New York was 
made for the city of Brooklyn, 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 195 


system which finally wrought its overthrow.” ! Realizing 
its demoralizing effects several hundred men and women 
had in 1876 volunteered their services to the commission- 
ers of charities as volunteer visitors to the outdoor poor. 
This sounded the doom of public outdoor relief and 
cleared the way for a better system of charity, for out of 
the Association of Volunteer Visitors the Brooklyn Bureau 
of Charities came as a natural growth. Not only the first 
‘president, secretary and treasurer of the bureau had been 
volunteer visitors to the outdoor poor of the county, but 
most of the original trustees and members of the society 
had obtained their education in that school of practical 
service. The new society began active work in January, 
1879, with Mr. Low as its first president. It had been 
discovered in the meantime that the city’s appropriation 
for outdoor relief was illegal under the city charter. This 
resulted in its abolition but a short time after the new 
society began active work. Although this cut off abruptly 
$141,137 of doles from public funds, the number in the 
almshouse decreased from 10,231 to 8,736, and there was 
no increased demand on private charity. 

The title “Bureau of Charities” was chosen because it 
was to be “‘a clearing house” of information only. During 
the first two years of its existence the Bureau devoted 
itself mainly to obtaining a registry of names from other 
charitable institutions, churches and individuals, aiding 
such contributors in turn by making the information 
received from one available for the benefit of all. At 
the end of this time it found that the work could not 
be maintained on so negative a line of action. To prevent 
individuals and other: societies from being imposed upon 
was not enough to justify the existence of the Bureau. 
The Bureau, without changing its name, accordingly 
adopted at the beginning of 1882 the broader purposes 


1 Alfred T. White, “The Story of Twenty-five Years,’ Charities, Vol. 
XII, p. 7 (1904). 


196 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


and policies which characterized charity organization 
societies elsewhere. Under Mr. George B. Buzelle, the 
first general secretary,’ many district conferences of the 
Bureau were organized in different parts of the city, each 
with its corps of friendly visitors. During the first three 
years of its existence the society made no appeal to the 
public to meet its expenses; these were borne by the 
officers and a few of their friends. They desired that the 
organization should prove its right to the support of the 
public before making an appeal. When the society did 
make its appeal it met “a generous response.” ? 


Se 


The movement thus far, with the possible exception 
of the Germantown experiment, had been limited to the 
larger cities. The year 1878 saw its extension to two 
smaller centers of population, Syracuse, New York, and 
Newport, Rhode Island. In the former place a Bureau 
of Labor and Charities was organized December 20, 1878, 
with a constitution and general plan of work similar to 
other charity organization societies. By 1882 it had 
been instrumental, as similar societies had been elsewhere, 
in materially reducing the amount of local public outdoor 
relief. 

In Newport a study of the situation revealed the 
astonishing fact that “one in ten of the population was 
either wholly or in part supported by charity, and that 
nearly one-half of that charity was thrown away.” * The 
new society, formally launched February 12, 1879, 
announced at the outset that its object was “the per- 


THE MOVEMENT SPREADS TO SMALLER CITIES 


*To this service he gave his whole heart, time and strength, from 
November, 1881, until his death in April, 1893. During his term the 
Society developed from smail beginnings into an active organization 
covering all of Brooklyn. 

* Report of the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Meeting of the Brooklyn 
Bureau of Charities, p. 1 (1,903). 

* Quoted by Charles D. Kellogg in his history, “Charity Organization 
in the United States.” Proceedings, National Conference of Charities 
and Correction, 2oth session, p. 58 (1893). 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 197 


manent elevation of the character and condition of the 
poor.” As elsewhere, its first rule was to help the poor 
to help themselves, and the method which the society 
heartily adopted to accomplish this end was that of 
friendly visiting. By 1879 no less than fifty-two visitors 
were on its lists. Discovering that many of the poor who 
applied to them for relief during the winter had exactly 
the same income as others who lived comfortably through- 
out the year through better management, the society 
secured in 1880 the services of four women who volun- 
teered to call every week from house to house to collect 
the small sums that these people could afford to lay by. 
The work of inculcating habits of thrift among its bene- 
ficiaries early became a marked feature of the society in 
question. To the Newport society belongs the credit of 
inaugurating the earliest organized effort in this country 
on the part of a charity organization society to promote 
small savings among the poor. 


THE Boston ASSOCIATED CHARITIES 


The Boston Associated Charities was founded in 1879. 
Mention has been made of the steps already taken in 
Boston, beginning in 1874, that paved the way for the 
establishment in 1879 of an organization for the relief 
of distress whose scope would embrace the entire city. 
It should not be forgotten in acknowledging this debt to 
the immediate forerunners of the Associated Charities 
that the ground in Boston had already been ploughed 
and made ready by the writings of Joseph Tuckerman, 
collected and edited in 1874 by Edward Everett Hale 
under the title ‘The Elevation of the Poor,” and 
by the Boston Provident Association. As early as 1859 

*Mrs. John H. Scribner, “The Savings Society,” Proceedings, National 
Conference of Charities and Correction, 14th session, p. 143 (1887). 

? Miss Zilpha D. Smith stated in person to the writer that the writings 


of Tuckerman “had great influence” in the formative days of the new 
movement. 


198 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


the report of this society had contained a plea for the 
erection of a building in which the offices of the various 
civic charities and the principal voluntary societies of the 
city might bring their administrations under one roof in 
order to secure the advantages of close cooperation. By 
1869 such a building had been erected by the joint liber- 
ality of the city and of public spirited citizens. The 
experience gained in the building and the habits of 
thought engendered by it were no small factor in ad- 
vancing the cause of the Associated Charities of Boston. 
The formation of the new association was nevertheless 
bitterly opposed. Those favoring it had to fight their 
way to the favor of the existing charitable organizations 
of the city inch by inch. These older societies knew the 
worth of registration but doubted the value of ‘friendly 
visiting.” They were willing to support the new move- 
ment, provided ‘‘the visitors had no power of relief.” 
This condition was acceded to, and on February 26, 1879, 
a provisional committee was formed by delegates from 
many charities, which carried on the work until December 
8th, when a constitution was adopted and went into effect. 
The Boston society thus began as a delegate body. This 
explains not only why the new organization was named 
an ‘“‘Associated Charities” rather than a “Charity Organi- 
zation Society,” but also much of its subsequent history. 
In the winter of 1878-79, district conferences with 
executive committees were formed tentatively in various 
parts of the city, and enlisted volunteers to visit the poor. 
Within a year, the organized districts nearly covered the 
city; and in December, 1881, when a charter was secured 
from the state, the conferences included the whole 
municipality, except West Roxbury and Brighton. 
¥Y The new society adopted as its program the raising 
of the needy above the need of relief whenever pos- 
sible, the obtaining of suitable aid for those incapable 
of earning support, the prevention of’ begging, the 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. I99 


diminution of pauperism and the prevention of children 
growing up as paupers by encouraging habits of thrift 
and self-dependence. It proposed accomplishing these 
objects by providing a means for the registration of all 
the charitable relief of Boston granted from whatever 
source, by the investigation of the case of each of its 
applicants for relief, by working in close codperation with 
the public authorities, churches, charitable agencies and 
benevolent individuals of the city, and by the organiza- 
tion in each district of a large corps of volunteer visitors, 
so that only a small number of families should be assigned . 
to each. 

The Associated Charities was in no way to interfere 
with the work of churches or special societies. It pro- 
posed rather to place trustworthy information within the 
reach of everybody to whom the poor apply,—information 
which would enable people to give to those who need it, 
and save them from wasting, or worse than wasting, their 
gifts——and to provide for volunteer visiting under the 
direction of organized committees. 

To serve as a clearing house of information the society 
collected reports of all relief, and other information, by 
daily, weekly, or monthly returns, and posted them upon 
cards kept in alphabetical order. ‘The returns of each 
society or persons were put on a separate card; and all 
the cards relating to one family were fastened together. 
The office would then mail to any society or person who 
reported relief, or who was asked to give relief to any 
case, a prompt reply stating what other relief was being 
given and by whom, in order that each person or agency 
relieving might have exact knowledge of the fact to the 
end that relief might be more intelligent. The prompt 
reporting back to the agency or individual interested was 
at the time peculiar to the Boston society. It was so 
successful that within two years of the founding of the 
new society it had become a clearing house of “all relief 


200 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


given by all agencies and persons and of all information 
collected by them.’”? 

Three features characterized the new society from 
its birth. First, like the Buffalo organization, it main- 
tained no relief fund. Second, it aimed to deal largely 
with distress by means of personal influence. It has 
always striven to secure enough friendly visitors to make 
it possible to assign to each visitor only a few cases 
at a time. Each visitor acts under the guidance of a 
conference, and is responsible for using every endeavor 
to prevent the family committed to his or her charge 
“from sinking into pauperism.” As a result of the 
experience of its first year of work, its president empha- 
sized with much confidence the fact or ‘“‘great discovery” 
that ‘“‘a gentleman or lady will in a surprising proportion 
of cases, discover means to help a family into independ- 
ence, if he or she goes into their homes and learns the 
whole truth, what the various members of the family can 
do or can be made to do; going there not only to give 
alms, but prohibited from doing so, and therefore forced 
to study how to aid the family toward self-support.””” 

Third, the Boston society aimed to use its influence 
to launch such enterprises for the development of thrift 
as savings funds, etc., but never to undertake these extra 
activities itself, though often having among the directors 
of such agencies many of the same persons as were inter- 
ested in one capacity or another in the Associated 
Charities. 

To an unusual degree, Boston was ready for the new 
movement. The cooperation of many of the leading 
agencies, churches and individuals * was early secured. It 


*A letter from the Associated Charities of Boston, The Monthly 
| Register, Vol. II, No. 8, pp. 7, 8 (1881). 

*Robert Treat Paine, Jr., “The Work of Volunteer Visitors of the 
Associated Charities among the Poor,” Journal of American Social Sci- 
ence Association, No. XII, Part 1, p. 110 (1880). 

*Of these special mention should be made of Mrs. James T. Fields, 
one of the founders of the Boston Codperative Society which, as has 
been noted, preceded the Associated Charities. Her personality was an 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 201 


was not long before the Associated Charities was able 
to report that while it had no relief funds of its own and 
wanted none, codperation with the Provident Associa- 
tion of the city, the Overseers of the Poor and other 
relief agencies was so cordial that the cases where 
relief was necessary were supplied by these agencies 
at their request and rarely were they refused. The 
society attributed its success in this aspect of its 
work to “having started with the idea of drawing” the 
various charitable societies “toward each other and of 
aiding them to organize their work rather than with the 
idea of organizing them from the outside,—as ‘Associated 
Charities’ rather than a Charity Organization.” More- 
over, the society could claim at this time a confidential 
exchange of information regarded as unequalled elsewhere 
in the world,” and numbered its friendly visitors by the 
hundreds (600 to 700), gaining the reputation for Boston 
in charity organization circles which has ever remained 
with her, of being ‘“‘the friendly visitors’ native heath.” 
By 1882, street and door-to-door begging were but little 
known. In the same year the Associated Charities ap- 
pointed its first standing Committee on Dwellings of the 
Poor and launched thereby its long crusade for better 
homes. 


inspiration to many. She exerted at the time a wide influence especially 
through her writings. Special mention should also be made to Robert 
Treat Paine, Jr., first president, and one whose services to the society 
extended over a period of years, and Dr. Charles P. Putnam, a leader 
who made few speeches and wrote little but who was most efficient 
in organizing the work. As a member of the first general committee 
to consider and forward plans, as chairman of the committee on district 
conferences, and as president of one district, Dr. Putnam’s quick 
discernment of the special powers of individual workers, paid or volun- 
teer, his grasp of details and of their influence on outcome, made him 
invaluable to the society. He was chosen president on the resignation 
of Mr. Paine, and was president of the Associated Charities until his 
(Dr. Putnam’s) death in the spring of 1914. 

*Report of Standing Committee on the Organization of Charities in 
Small Cities, “The Associated Charities of Boston,” Proceedings, National 
Conference of Charities and Correction, t1oth session, pp. 88, 89 


(1883). 
* By 1881 the society had registered over 8200 cases. 


202 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


THE INDIANAPOLIS SOCIETY 


Indianapolis was next to join the movement. By 1878 
the relief situation in Indianapolis had become critical. 
The city had been a city of the middle classes, of many 
small and modest homes, with comparatively little grind- 
ing poverty; but with its development as a railroad center 
and the increase of manufacturing, in spite of otherwise 
favorable conditions poverty and pauperism had grown 
rapidly. For some years there had been an enormous 
amount of outdoor relief recklessly distributed, although 
for a year or two something like business methods had 
been applied to its distribution and the amount consid- 
erably reduced. The Indianapolis Benevolent Society, the 
relief society of the city, officered entirely by volunteers 
and adapted more nearly to the needs of a village com- 
munity than a city, had been losing more and more of a 
grip of the situation. The society, however, had a strong 
hold on the sympathy of the citizens, and those outside its 
management did not realize how obsolete its methods 
were. This was appreciated, however, by the directors, 
who, at the annual public meeting of the society on 
Thanksgiving Day, 1878, only seven persons being pres- 
ent, presented a proposition to disband and turn over the 
few dollars which remained in the treasury to some other 
charity. One of these seven was the Rev. Oscar C. Mc- 
Culloch,” who as a city minister had often found himself 


* Alexander Johnson, “Oscar Carlton McCulloch,” The Charities Re- 
view, Vol. I, p. 101 (1892). 

*Dr. McCulloch was a combination of an idealist and a business 
man, and one who won men and women to him not only in the city 
where he was so long a leading clergyman, but in the National Con- 
ference of Charities and Correction and elsewhere. He was, subsequent 
to the founding of the Indianapolis Society, instrumental in organizing 
the State Board of Charities of Indiana, which has always commanded 
the services of able workers. He will long be remembered as the author 
of “The Tribe of Ishmael,” a study in social degradation which he pub- 
lished in 1888 (see pp. 236, 237). For tributes to his work see In 


a. 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 203 


“embarrassed by the number and doubtful nature of the de- 


mands to which his sympathies impelled him to respond 


liberally. He had seen that charity in a large city is a 


very different thing from the simple neighborly helpful- 
ness of asmall town. The need of organization had thus 
been forced upon him; he had become convinced that 
without it the most careful and conscientious giver is 


probably doing more harm than good with his gifts.‘ This 
had led him to a study of sound principles of relief, 


so that when he described to a little group of his 
six fellow directors of the Benevolent Society, the work 
being done in Boston, Buffalo and other places, and 
depicted the possible future of wise charity in glowing 
terms, the motion to disband was dropped and a new 
motion to continue and develop the work prevailed, and 
he was elected president of the society. 

It was soon thereafter that he was instrumental in 
founding the Indianapolis Charity Organization Society 
(1879), which was to bring order out of chaos. Its 
functions were similar to those common to other like 
organizations. A marked feature of the new society, how- 
ever, was its centralization. The rooms of the society 
became the headquarters of various charitable agencies. 
The district committees had their offices in the same 
building. Telephonic connection was arranged with all 
public institutions. Every case of need, accident or 
begging was reported to the central office, and was re- 
ferred to the district superintendent to whom it belonged.” 


Memoriam, Tributes to Oscar McCulloch, Proceedings, National Con- 
ference of Charities and Correction, 19th session (1892). 

*“Twenty-five years ago (1881) the city streets in Indianapolis were 
full of children begging. Their mothers at home were washing their 
eyes with some kind of a chemical that would make them appear blind, 
so that people seeing their affliction would more readily give them 
money of which they were unworthy. To-day a begging child is sel- 
dom if ever seen in the city.” Charities and The Commons, Vol. XVII, 
P. 571 (1906). 

*W. G. Fairbanks, “Reports from States: Vermont,” Proceedings, 
National Conference of Charities and Correction, 12th session, p. 85 


(1885). 


204 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


BEGINNINGS IN DETROIT 


The year 1879 saw a beginning in the organization of 
charity in Detroit. The history of this first effort destined 
to failure is illustrative of the obstacles which in more than 
one place confronted the new movement. By the courage 
and persevering efforts of a public spirited woman? a 
reform of seemingly chronic abuses of poor relief was 
finally inaugurated. The mayor called a public meeting 
at which the subject of the relief of the poor was 
thoroughly discussed. ‘The plan and work of an asso- 
ciated charities was explained. As an outcome, the 
Detroit Associated Charities was finally organized in the 
fall, the London and Buffalo organizations serving as 
models for the working machinery. 

The city was mapped into districts and committees and 
visitors were appointed for each. The new society enjoyed 
the assurance of substantial financial support. At first 
the city director of the poor was favorably inclined toward 
the work of the new organization. He soon, however, 
apparently suffered a change of heart, and it was sud- 
denly announced in mid-winter that the city poor fund 
had been exhausted. In the acute situation that this 
evoked the Associated Charities promptly organized a 
relief society under its auspices.” When the public appro- 
priation for the poor of the city was up for passage the 
Associated Charities was instrumental in having it re- 
duced to $13,000. It soon became evident to the backers 
of the new organization that their work must suffer greatly 
so long as the city administration of relief was in politics. 
Accordingly the members of the organization disbanded 
and renewed their activities at the state capital, where 
they were successful in securing a law providing for 


*Mrs. Isabel G. D. Stewart. 

*Its officers and functions were kept distinct. It was able to disband 
in the spring. Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and Cor- 
rection, roth session, p. 111 (1883). 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 205 


a non-partisan Board of Poor Commissioners to serve 
without pay in place of the Director of the Poor. Early 
in 1880 the Associated Charities was reorganized and 
reestablished with nine districts.'_ The reorganized society 
soon gained the appreciation of the public, and was not 
“wanting in substantial and liberal support.” 


THE CINCINNATI SOCIETY 


Cincinnati also began organizing its charity in 1879. 
The initiative came from several philanthropic organiza- 
tions, notably the Women’s Christian Association, who 
interested in the needs of their city had watched with 
interest the growth elsewhere of the movement for organ- 
izing charity. The new society began avowedly on the 
lines laid down in Boston, but, as it practically worked 
out, soon found itself on the ‘Philadelphia plan” of 
decentralization with twelve district organizations, each 
dispensing relief. These the Central Board was not able 
to control. The situation was further complicated by 
the fact that the voluntary relief societies of the city were 
inadequate to their task as were the municipal poor taxes. 
It was only through the careful leadership of the general 
secretary of the Associated Charities that a general regis- 
tration was instituted, and the system of district organi- 
zations given some cohesion.* During the eighties, how- 
ever, charity organization in Cincinnati was destined to 
a checkered career.* 


* These nine districts were grouped into the three divisions of East, 
Central and West. Each division had a district office for winter service 
and a salaried district agent. Proceedings of the National Conference of 
Charities and Correction, 1883, p. 111. Many volunteers were attached 
to these district committees, but as in Philadelphia and Cincinnati many 
of, them failed to connect themselves with the central organization. 

Ibid. 

*Charles D. Kellogg, “Charity Organization in the United States,” 
Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correction, 12th 
session, pp. 52-93 (1893). 

*“Notable is the history of Cincinnati . . . which in coquetting with 
relief distribution from its own treasury ...came near the verge of 


206 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


FURTHER EXTENSIONS TO SMALLER CITIES 


The spread of the movement to smaller cities and 
towns had already begun. In 1879 there was a still 
further extension, Poughkeepsie, N. Y., and Orange, 
N. J., making beginnings in charity organization. In 
the latter place a few public spirited women, having 
learned of the new movement in charity already begun 
in Buffalo, New Haven, Philadelphia and Boston, met 
together to take steps toward a local organization. Cor- 
respondence with the president of the Boston Associated 
Charities, Mr. Robert Treat Paine, Jr., and the reports 
of other societies, notably Philadelphia, threw much 
light on their problem, enabling them to crystalize their 
charitable theories and aspirations into an organization 
which they named the Orange Bureau of Registration 
changed in 1883 to the Orange Bureau of Associated 
Charities. 

Beside the customary work of a charity organization 
society, the Orange Bureau organized as early as 1880 a 
union employment society. In 1882, a day nursery was 
opened in which children were cared for while their 
parents were at work, and from which, in the course of 
time, was evolved a primary school for those among the 
children left at the nursery who were old enough to 
receive instruction. In the same year the Bureau opened 
a laundry in connection with its employment society. 
The Orange Bureau of Charities became, along with 
the Brooklyn and Indianapolis societies, a pioneer in de- 


extinction.” Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correc- 
tion, p. 64 (1893). 

Mr. Alexander Johnson related to the author an incident illustrative 
of both the checkered career of the work in Cincinnati and of the danger 
of subsidies. One of the district societies received from the city for 
relief purposes after a flood in the early eighties more than it had any ~ 
legitimate use for at the time. As a result the society grew lazy and 
during the next winter completely “flattened out,” because it had been 
pauperized. 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 207 


veloping industrial features as a part of its work of family 
rehabilitation. 

Beginnings in charity organization were made in 1881 
in three Massachusetts towns—Taunton, Lowell and 
Cambridge; in Salem, N. J., in Cleveland, Baltimore, and 
Washington, D. C. Further reference to the last two 
only need claim our attention here. 


THE BALTIMORE SOCIETY 


After hearing an address by the president of the 
Boston Associated Charities on the organization of 
charity, Daniel C. Gilman,' president of Johns Hopkins 
University, called a meeting in Baltimore which resulted 
in the organization of the Charity Organization Society 
of Baltimore. Launched in 1881, the new organization 
had the advantage of the experience of similar organiza- 
tions in a number of the larger American cities whose 
example it followed in the main. Though south of the 
Mason and Dixon Line the Baltimore society, in common 
with other societies, stated that there was to be no 
exclusion from its work on account of race. Not wishing 
to interfere in any way with existing benevolent societies, 
no relief was to be given except in very urgent cases or 
when not available from existing agencies. The society 
was to be a means of cooperation and of education. The 
methods set forth were investigation, registration as a 
means of coodperation, conferences of representatives of 
various agencies, and the personal touch, the bringing of 
the comfortable into contact with the wretched, and of 
the strong with the depressed. Its work was to cover 


*Several years later President Gilman introduced Amos G. Warner, 
who was a fellow in the university to his career as social worker by 
nominating him for the position of general secretary of the Baltimore 
society. In 1892 Mr. Gilman organized the charity organization section 
of the International Congress of Charities and Correction held in 
Chicago. 


208 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


the city. Not least significant, the causes of destitution 
and pauperism were to be studied. 

For several years the society accomplished not a little 
by educating public opinion through offering facilities 
for registration and codperation and by holding meetings 
of persons who were largely absorbed in the particular 
ways and claims of their pet charities. The education of 
givers and workers in district boards, through church 
societies and by publications, under the vigorous lead of 
the late John Glenn and Dr. Amos G. Warner belong, 
however, to a later date. 


THE WASHINGTON SOCIETY 


At the time of launching the Washington Associated 
Charities in 1881 long lines of men and women, assembled 
with clock-like regularity in front of the soup houses of 
the city, were a daily spectacle at the National Capital. 
The Provident Aid Society of the city, “‘good as its inten- 
tions . . . and merciful as its benefits” had been in 
many instances, had closed its doors ‘“‘overwhelmed with 
applications and conscious of a necessity for different 
methods.”! Even a Labor Exchange, organized in 1877, 
and which for a while had done a flourishing business, had 
suspended work for lack of funds. The new society 
divided the city into eighteen subdivisions which, follow- 
ing the “Philadelphia plan,” raised and disbursed their 
own funds, with aid, however, in some cases from the 
central office. The work to be accomplished was great, 
but by 1888 soup houses and penny lunch rooms in 
Washington were institutions of the past, and the ground 
prepared for more constructive work to follow later. 


*See First Annual Report of the Associated Charities of the District 
of Columbia (1882). 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 209 


THE NEw YoRK SOCIETY 


The Charity Organization Society of New York City 
was destined to be the most influential of those founded 
the last years of the period under review. The ground 
had been well prepared for the seeds of charity organiza- 
tion. As early as 1873-74 an effort already noted, had 
been made to establish in New York City a bureau of 
charities to serve as a Clearing house for the relief-giving 
agencies of the city.t In 1875 all public outdoor relief 
had been abolished except for transportation to needy 
transients and to resident adult blind. In the same year 
the State Charities Aid Association of New York had 
issued as one of its publications reprints of “Homes of 
the London Poor,” by Octavia Hill. The influence of 
Miss Hill proved to be as marked in the work of charity 
organization in New York as it was in Boston and Phila- 
delphia. In 1878 Miss Louisa Lee Schuyler had called 
attention to ‘“‘the importance of uniting individual and 
associated volunteer effort in behalf of the poor,” ” 
while in October, 1881, in a special report to the State 
Board of Charities “in relation to outdoor relief so- 
cieties in New York City,” Josephine Shaw Lowell * 
had pointed out the “inevitably great waste of energy, 
effort and money, owing to the want of codperation 
among the societies which administer the charities of 
New York City.” As a result of this report a resolu- 
tion was passed by the State Board of Charities, which 


*See pp. 177, 178 of this study. 

7A paper read at a conference of the State Charities Aid Association 
of New York, which Miss Schuyler had founded in 1872. She had 
brought into its original membership a large number of women in New 
York City and throughout the state, who had been fellow workers 
with her during the Civil War in the Women’s Central Association of 
Relief, which was a board of the United States Sanitary Commission, a 
forerunner of the Red Cross. 

*For an account of her life and work see W. R. Stewart, “The Phil- 
anthropic Work of Josephine Shaw Lowell,” also “In Memoriam,” Jo- 
sephine Shaw Lowell, published by Charities Publication Committee, 
New York (1906). 


210 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


authorized the New York City Commissioners of the 
State Board of Charities “‘to take such steps as they may 
deem wise to inaugurate a Wate of mutuad help and 
cooperation” among the societies “engaged in, teaching 
and relieving the poor of the city in their own homes. ae 


Accordingly the New York City members of the State 


Board of Charities appointed a Committee on the Organ- 
ization of Charities of the City of New York.? After 
several meetings, at one of which Rev. S$. H. Gurteen of 
Buffalo “gave an extended and interesting account of 
charity organization societies of Buffalo and other cities, 
and of his views in regard to the establishment of a sim- 
ilar organization in the city of New York,” the committee 
drafted a constitution which was reported back to the 
New York City members of the State Board, who there- 
upon requested the committee to become members of 
the Central Council and called a meeting for organiza- 
tion. Soon after the meeting, which was held in Febru- 
ary of 1882, cordial expressions of approval and offers 
of help were received from the State Charities Aid Asso- 
ciation and the Association for Improving the Condition 
of the Poor. Thus was the New York society launched 


*Mrs. Wm. B. Rice of the State Charities Aid Association united 
with Mrs. Lowell in urging this action on the part of the State Board 
of Charities. The preamble and resolution were as follows: 

“Whereas, There are in the City of New York a large number of in- 
dependent societies engaged in teaching and relieving the poor of the 
city in their own homes, and 

“Whereas, There is at present no system of codperation by which so- 
cieties can receive definite mutual information in.regard to the work of 
each other, and 

“Whereas, Without some such system it is impossible that much of 
their effort should not be wasted, and even do harm by encouraging 
pauperism and imposture, therefore, 

Resolved, That the Commissioners of New York City are hereby ap- 


pointed a committee to take such steps, as they may deem wise, to 


inaugurate a system ef mutual help and codperation between such so- 


cieties.” Reports and papers, C. O. S. N. Y. C., Feb., 1888, Following — 


Title of Seventh Annual Report of C. O. S. 

* The members of the committee were Dr. S. O. Vanderpoel, chairman, 
Alfred Roosevelt, Charles S. Fairchild, Arthur M. Dodge, J. Kennedy 
Tod, Dr. Stephen Smith, Josephine Shaw Lowell, R. Duncan Harris 
and J. R. Roosevelt, Secretary. 


ge 
ar es 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 2II 


not as “the result of popular demand,” but of the earnest, 
patient leadership of a few persons. 


BEGINNINGS IN NEWARK AND TERRE HAUTE 


In 1882 the movement spread also to Newark, New 
Jersey, and Terre Haute, Indiana. In the former, little 
progress was made at first. In the latter place the new 
society, which was founded by Charles R. Henderson, 
had the not uncommon experience of failing to secure 
the hearty codperation of the two principal relief so- 
cieties of the city. As a result its work was not during 
its early days very effectual, being more or less limited 
to transient cases, begging, and finding homes for children 


orphaned or deserted.? 


THe Earty Days IN RETROSPECT 


With so many efforts for organizing charity crystalliz- 
ing into definite organizations within so short a space, 
it is not surprising that they should have been viewed 
by a contemporary as an “uprising of the people in the 
field of charity.” * This stage ends by 1883, since by 
that time the more or less independent beginnings of the 


_ movement had ceased. At the time there were approxi- 
mately twenty-five charity organization societies with 


about half as many affiliated societies, scattered through- 
out the East and Middle West. 


* Jeffrey R. Brackett, “Supervision and Education in Charity,” p. 149 
(1903). 

Charles D. Kellogg, secretary of the Philadelphia Society for Organ- 
izing Charity, was engaged as organizing secretary. His familiarity 
with charity organization methods, his care and patience and devotien 
to the necessary details of the office and his considerate and generous 
nature which won friends in every direction, were especially valuable 
assets to the Society throughout its formative period.” Twenty-fifth 
Annual Report of The Charity Organization Society of New York City, 
p. 18 (1907). 

* Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correction, p. 84 
(1883). 

® Robert Treat Paine, Jr. See Proceedings of the National Conference 
of Charities and Correction, p. 119 (1880). 


212 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


One should not be misled by names, but should realize 
that some of the early societies amounted to no more 
than general societies for material relief, seeming to re- 
gard the word “organization” as meaning existence merely 
as a society. Others took the word to mean only co- 
operation among a few charitable agencies, an organiza- 
tion of charities. It is easy to copy a name, but hard 
to copy a thing. That the movement had been sporadic 
in places is indicated by the fact that up to the time under 
review thirteen societies, mostly in the smaller com- 
munities, had already lapsed.t. Nevertheless a limited 
number of societies were societies for organizing charity 
both in word and deed, and from then on the 
steady progress of the movement was assured, though 
here and there the careers of individual societies were 
checkered. 

Among those who were entitled to the name of charity 
organization society variations in details of method 
were inevitable. The charity of a city, Miss Rich- 
mond has well pointed out, is a living, breathing 
thing, not to be poured like plaster into a mould imported 
from without, but to be developed from within. It is a 
living thing, and like all other living things subject to 
the general laws of life and development. The movement 
came as a natural evolution or its spread would not have 
been either so rapid or spontaneous. Like most Anglo- 
Saxon institutions, it grew without any preconceived plan. 
What obtains at any one moment is the result of past 
conditions and years of growth. As each American city 
had had its charitable life and history before the new 
movement began, it is not at all surprising that previous 
conditions should have had their influence. The crea- 
tion. of an organization like the Associated Charities 
of Boston presupposes such a general enlightenment of 
the public on the aims and methods of charity organiza- 


*Anna L. Dawes, “The Need of Training Schools for a New Profes- 
sion,” Lend-a-Hand, Vol. XI, p. 94 (1893). 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 213 


tion as to make possible a widespread codperation among 
the leaders in charity. In Philadelphia, the basis for 
such an association was not only lacking, but the new 
society encountered in its earliest years a most deter- 
mined opposition from some men influential in the lead- 
ing charitable societies of the city. 
_ Emphasis on the value of permanent friendly relations 
between the poor and some volunteer visitor early became 
a marked feature of the Boston Society. On the other 
hand the London Society and many societies in the United 
States, notably that of New York City, were organized 
with the view of helping people in need out of a par- 
icular situation. Their object was to do a definite piece 
“of work—“‘to get people out of their trouble.” The dif- 
ference in emphasis was due to a difference in historic 
background. The Boston Society had grown in part out 
of the Codperative Society of Volunteer Visitors Among 
the Poor, and had been founded among other things to 
carry on that work. It aimed therefore to make the rela- 
tionship between its friendly visitors and those visited a 
friendly and permanent one. Again, Buffalo being a 
younger city than London, soon found that the success 
of its work required departing from its London model 
and so established a central council and central office 
from which all its work could be expanded and guided. 
Again, the problems to be faced in a city like New York 
with its enormous changing population, its immigration, 
and its great tenement houses, and those in a city like 
Philadelphia with its vast area, encompassing many more 
or less autonomous communities, made necessary quite 
different forms of organization. It was no mere chance 
that early caused Philadelphia to develop the system of 
district associations which for so long a time characterized 
that city. 
The variations in the titles adopted by the organizers 
of the various societies bear in some instances historical 
testimony of the difference in problems to be faced. Thus 


~ 


214 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


as has been seen, Philadelphia, more nearly duplicating 
London conditions, adopted the London form of organiza- 
tion in the main and the London title. The Brooklyn 
society was called a Bureau of Charities, since it was 
designed to serve at first merely as a clearing house, 
while Boston chose the name Associated Charities as its 
society began as an association of charities on the dele- 
gate plan. 

Certain outstanding facts are evident to the student of 
this early period of the charity organization movement in 
America. The immediate and precipitating cause of the 
movement was the panic of 1873 and the following years 
of depression. The more remote cause sprang from what 
for want of a better term may be called the citizenship 
motive—the desire to discharge more effectively the social 
obligations of neighborliness incident to citizenship even in 
tlle complex and unneighborly city. Charity organization 
societies at first naturally sprang up in the larger centers 
of population, as it was there that the old social relation- 
ship between the better to do and the less fortunate more 
completely broke down. ‘The relatively smaller centers, 
such as Germantown, Philadelphia; Orange, New Jersey; 
Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Newport, Rhode Island, 
were either suburbs of large cities or smaller cities. They 
were in no sense rural or even country towns or vil- 
lages. 

The movement in not a few places received great im- 
petus from the discontent with the prevailing methods of 
handling public outdoor relief. In fact, the new society 
often undertook as its first task steps toward the reduc- 
tion of the amount of public outdoor relief or its com- 
plete abolition. It is interesting to note in this connection 
that the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities owed its origin 
to the very persons who had labored to remove the pau- 
perizing effects in the system of public outdoor relief 
then obtaining in Brooklyn, but who, believing it was a 
losing fight, called into being a Bureau of Charities to 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 215 


help abolish all public outdoor relief. As one student 
of the movement points out, ‘‘the same impulse that es- 
tablished the new societies abolished outdoor relief in 
Brooklyn and Philadelphia and greatly reduced it in 
Buffalo and Indianapolis.” ! 

Charity organization, however, probably received 
greater impetus, if indeed it be not its raison d’etre, in 
the existing overlapping and resultant waste of private 
charity. “In nearly every instance,” writes another 
student of the movement, ‘“‘the motive leading to these 

_ organizations is declared to have been discontent with the 
prodigality and inefficiency of public relief and the 
chaotic state of private charity.” ° 

While the movement spread _so rapidly and often_ap- 
parently spontaneously in America _as_in England, it 
owed its origin not so much to the fact that people were 
poor as to the fact that others were charitable. By 
no stretch of the term could the movement be called 

proletarian in either origin or support. The launching 
_of these societies was in the main, as was said of the New 
York society, not the result of popular demand, but of 
the earnest patient leadership of a few persons. Its or- 
ganizers and sponsors were a handful of influential and 
public-spirited citizens, of whom the Church contributed 
a goodly share who had caught a vision of a better way 
of helping those in distress. 
It is surprising that a movement which in its early 
_ days claimed the active service of so many who were 
or had been in the service of the Church, should have 
been viewed by some as ‘“‘cold.” While the new societies 
guarded themselves scrupulously against the charge of 
proselyting, throughout the writings and addresses of the 
leaders of the period there breathes a strong underlying 
religious spirit enjoining all men to succor the weak. A 


*Amos G. Warner, “American Charities,’ revised edition, p. 444 
(1908). 

* Jeffrey R. Brackett, “Supervision and Education in Charity,” p. 130 
(1903). 


216 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


partial explanation of the charge of “coldness” may have 
been the emphasis too often placed by some of less vision 
in the movement on the economy of charity organization 
to the taxpayer and charitable public. The emphasis on 
economy as a virtue in itself caused some of the societies 
to be viewed as devices for “saving the taxpayer.” 

To a student of social institutions it is possibly not sur- 
prising that “one of the most formidable obstacles that” 
the new societies “had to contend against, especially in 
the older cities,” was “the unreasonable prejudice of long- 
established charitable institutions and benevolent socie- 
ties.” 1 Charity organization came as a reform and re- 
forms are naturally looked at askance. 

Among the other outstanding features of the spread of 
the movement during the early days was the free trade in 
ideas. Individuals brought back to their own communi- 
ties accounts of what was going on elsewhere. ‘This fre- 
quently resulted in an informal interchange of informa- 
tion. The Monthly Register of the Philadelphia Society 
early proved a forum for the new societies. The move- 
ment found expression of its unity in the sixth National 
Conference of Charities and Correction, held in Chicago, 
when Mr. Seth Low presented a description of the work 
in Brooklyn and a committee was appointed upon Charity 
Organization. By 1881 not less than sixteen societies 
sent detailed reports of their work to the National Con- 
ference of Charities and Correction held that year. 

The inspiration of the movement during these earlier 
days was clearly English, although the writings of Joseph 
Tuckerman, collected and edited in 1874, had a definite 
influence, particularly in Boston. The pioneers on this 
side of the water turned to the writings of Edward Deni- 
son and Octavia Hill. Repeated references to the work 
and writings of the latter are found especially in the 
reports and papers of the Boston, New York and Phila- 
delphia societies. The motto of the Boston Associated 


*S. H. Gurteen, “Handbook of Charity Organization,” p. 121 (1882). 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 217 


Charities, copied by many other societies, “Not alms, but 


a friend,” specializing the word in its finest sense for a 
relation based upon love, was the direct inspiration of 
Octavia Hill.? 

The point of view—the philosophy of the pioneers in 
both England and America, steeped as it was in the 
Manchester School of Economics, was philanthropic in- 
dividualism. The stress was on personal influence, 
neighborly intercourse with the poor. The end was the 
building of character, and this involved the action of in- 
dividual on individual—“‘the living touch.” The big evil 
that the pioneers saw was pauperism, a character defect, 
rather than poverty, an economic and social question. 
Charitable people were interested in relieving those be- 
low what has been called a line of “tolerable misery.” 
Friendly visitors were admonished to prevent families 
in their charge from sinking into pauperism. Reports 
record with satisfaction the numbers of families “rescued 
from lives of chronic pauperism and started on respect- 
able and self-dependent courses.”” The prevention of pau- 
perism was a leading topic at the first National Confer- 


ence of Charities and Correction. It is but natural that 


pauperism rather than poverty should have been the main 
object of attack in the earlier days. With the West just 
being developed poverty was a relatively smaller problem 
than it is to-day. Moreover our knowledge of the nature 
and causes of poverty has advanced in the interim as have 
our standards of living. The emphasis of these earlier 
days on pauperism rendered invaluable service, especially 
in calling attention to the evils of much of the charity 
of the day, both private and public. Moreover, the fight 
against pauperism is ever present. The old ideas were 
not, are not, wrong. They have been rounded out, re- 
lieved from certain implications which are now recog- 
nized as false, and added unte. 


*Erving Winslow, “Philanthropic Individualism,’ The Survey, Vol. 
XXXIV, p. 555 (1915). 


218 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


The fear that pauperism growing rampant should en- 
danger the social order was occasionally put forward in 
some quarters as a motive for supporting the new move- 
ment. ‘‘We have ourselves created the monster (Pauper- 
ism),” wrote the founder of the Buffalo society, “have 
ourselves infused life into it, and we shall have ourselves 
alone to blame if the poor, craving for human sympathy, 
yet feeling their moral deformity, should some fine day 
wreak their vengeance upon society at large.” Again, 
_ it was held that charity organization societies would prove 
“the real answer to the Socialistic and Communistic 
theories” then “being energetically taught to the peo- 
ple.” The work of dealing with the elements of character 
in concrete individual cases, the writer urged, would prove 
an antidote to ‘“‘any artificial scheme of improving the 
condition of men without training them in elements of 
character) 

It is not at all surprising that a movement, launched 
in London under the chaotic charitable conditions existing 
in that city in 1869 and introduced into the United States 
at a time when public outdoor relief was in many places 
lavish and its administration careless, extravagant or even 
corrupt, and private almsgiving was too often a source 
of pauperism, should lay down as fundamental the prin- 
ciples of investigation, registration, codperation and 
friendly visiting. 

The purpose of investigation and registration was not 
merely “‘to find out fraud and stop excessive alms,” but 
also to ‘“‘decide wisely on the kind and quantity of relief 
to continue.” Its essence was ‘“‘to secure exact knowl- 
edge of the facts and so to add to the judgment and joy 
of the gift;” * to make benevolence, beneficence. Through 
its system of record keeping the charity organization 
society became the first social agency to apply scientific 


*D. O. Kellogg, “Charity in Philadelphia,” The Penn Monthly, Vol. 
IX, p. 719 (1878). 

See Letter from the Associated Charities of Boston, The Monthly 
Register, Vol. II, p. 7 (1881). 


~ "a 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 219 


methods to human relationships. The end of codpera- 
tion is strength.1 The motto of the New York Society, 
“United, an army; divided, a mob,” is illustrative. Social 
resources to be effective must be organized and so the 
societies called themselves charity organization societies 
or, still more graphically, societies for organizing charity. 

The importance placed by the pioneers on the “living 
touch” explains the emphasis of nearly all the early 
societies on friendly visiting. It was to bring “those of 
different classes into real friendly relations and so in time 
help raise those who are fallen low in any sense of the 
word.” * 

The fear of relief among the early workers was due not 
only to the fact that the movement was launched at a 
time when there were on all sides societies leaning on the 
crutch of a relief fund administering material aid without 
system and as mere doles but also to the belief that a 
too liberal relief policy might inhibit the undeveloped 
personal resources inherent in all families, and that relief 
In usual practice too often was a substitute for some- 
thing better. “If it (a charity organization society) asks 
you not to relieve,” wrote Oscar McCulloch “‘it is simply 
because it sees your relief is not wise. It is your own 
selfishness, and not your love, that prompts the gift— 
selfishness because you give ten cents instead of an hour 
of your time. It is given from indifference, because you 
do not ask how you may Jest help.” * By some workers, 
relief, even when necessary, was viewed as an evil.* The 


*“T should say the cornerstone of the whole [movement] was a 
thoroughly scientific codperation of all charitable agencies, public and 
private charities, church and what is omitted in the printed programs, 
ot the whole mass of the people.’ Robert Treat Paine, Jr., N. C. C. C. 
(1880), p. 119. 

* A letter from Octavia Hill to a visitor of the Philadelphia S. O. C. 
See Monthly Register, Vol. Il, p. 6 (1881). 

* Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correction, Vol. 
XVIII, pp. 361, 362 (18091). 

*“Personally I believe that relief is an evil—always. Even when it 
is necessary, I believe it is still an evil. One reason that it is an evil 
is because energy, independence, industry, and self-reliance are under- 
mined by it, and since these are the qualities which make self-support 
and self-respect possible, to weaken or undermine them is a serious 


220 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


important thing stressed by all, however, was that those 
helped should be helped thoroughly—adequately. Doles 
of money or time had no place in the principles of the 
pioneers. 

Because relief giving had proven one of the pitfalls that 
had stopped the progress of the old relief societies the 
weight of opinion among the leaders in the charity 
organization movement was against making relief-giving 
a function of the new societies. This one pitfall at least 
they could avoid. Accordingly, with some notable ex- 
ceptions, the early charity organization societies de- 
scribed themselves as “relief-obtaining” organizations 
rather than “relief-giving” societies, and sought to obtain 
the relief needed for families under their care by turning 
in all instances to kindred and friends, where they were 
found able to help, augmenting this when necessary by 
interesting a relief society or some benevolent individual 
in the particular family in question. A factor influencing 
many a society to adopt the no-relief-fund policy was the 
fear that the opposite policy would prove fatal to the 
new organization’s efforts to secure cooperation from the 
older charitable societies. 

These principles or methods of work became the 
“foundation stones” of the new movement—the essential 
features which distinguished it from the beginning, not 
because they were novel ideas, but because they were 
worked out for the first time consistently, and in the main 
adhered to with steadily increasing faith in their. potency. 

It is no disparagement of the pioneers of the new move- 
ment to say that to present-day workers the so-called 
“principles” of charity organization have a richer con- 
tent accompanied by a more satisfactory technique than 
they had to their predecessors of fifty years ago. It is 
only because the principles with which the movement be- 
gan were so vital that they have been capable of almost 


injury to inflict on any man.” Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, “The Evils 
of Investigation and Relief,” Charities, Vol. I, p. 9 (1898). 


BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT IN THE U. S. 22I 


indefinite development. As one student of the movement 
wrote on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of 
the New York Society: ‘The reason why investigation, 
registration, cooperation, and adequate relief are not now 
prominent in every discussion is not because these ‘foun- 
dation pillars’ have been allowed to crumble away, but 
because the twenty-five years have strengthened them 
until their names are commonplaces, and attention is 
naturally centered on the superstructure they support.” * 

* Lilian Brandt, “The Charity Organization Society of the City of New 


York,” 1882-1907, p. 13 (1907). (The Twenty-fifth Annual Report of 
the Society). ; 


CHAPTER VII 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 


[1883-1895 ] 


THE years 1883-1895 were primarily those of geograph- 
_ical expansion. ‘The number of societies increased from. 


approximately twenty-five to about one hundred, scat- 
tered from the Atlantic to the Pacific, throughout the 
South ? as well as throughout the North. The great ma- 
jority of societies, however, as was to be expected, were 
east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason and 
Dixon Line. 
/As important as the expansion of the movement was 
_the strengthening of the hold of charity organization in 
_many of the communities where _it_ aken 
root. Charity organization societies developed in many 
of these communities a kind of “overlordship of charity.” 
.The dominating position which they came to occupy re- 








_sulted from the fact that the business community fre- 
__quently turned to ‘such. organizations for protection from 
impostors. It was a natural step for them to add super- 


ener Sant 


visory powers which were to eventuate into the work 
of charities endorsement. 

In the larger cities of the country the local charity 
organization society came to be viewed as a fixed institu- 


*The growth of the movement in the cities of Louisville, Memphis, 
Washington, Chattanooga, Richmond, Va., Wilmington, N. C., and 
Charleston, S. C., is the subject of favorable comment by Philip W. 
Ayres. See “Charity Organization in Southern Cities,” Charities Review, 
Vol. IV, p. 259 (1895). In most of the places here listed it would be 
inaccurate to describe the local organization as a full-fledged charity 
organization society of the Boston or New York type. 


222 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 223 


tion. Buildings devoted exclusively to the housing of the 
private charities of the city soon were erected. Boston 
had had such a building since 1869, which had proven of 
great value in encouraging effective cooperation among 
the charities thus housed together. In 1891 Cleveland 
claimed a similar building, while in 1892 John Stewart 
Kennedy ' erected in New York City a United Charities 
Building,” the value of which to the whole city, not to 
mention the local charity organization society, can hardly 
be exaggerated. 
( The movement was no longer “on_trial”-in_the larger. 
_ centers of population. Three ideas which had permeated 
the early work of charity organization—the abolition of 
petty doles, the prohibition of proselyting of every na- 
ture, and the treating of the poor with delicacy and hold- 
ing their interests in sacred confidence—were accepted 
so generally as never to be questioned. A number of | 
affiliated societies which had been content_to give _relief— 
rather blindly, had frankly accepted the new gospel of _ 
the need for more accurate knowledge, more generous 


cooperation and the substitution of personal service for 
the cash allowance inkind. = 

~ By 1800 the fundamental principles of charity organi- 
zation had so permeated public opinion that Congress 
passed an act creating the office of Superintendent of 
Charities for the District of Columbia, a department con- 
sciously built on charity organization methods, and sub- 
sequently placed as the first incumbent of the office Amos 
G. Warner, well known in the ranks of the charity organi- 
zation movement. Many other victories were won. 
Principles and theories which formerly needed to be em- 





*It was through the further generosity of Mr. Kennedy that The New 
York School of Social Work, a training school conducted by the New 
York Charity Organization Society, was made possible. See pp. 308-310. 

“The plan of a charities building as carried out by Mr. Kennedy 
largely followed the lines of a suggestion for such a building made by 
Mr. Charles D. Kellogg, first Secvetary of the New York Charity Organi- 
zation Society, in a pamphlet generally circulated by him as early as 
1886. See The Survey, Vol. XXXI, p. 536 (1914). 


224 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


phasized and reiterated gradually became so well known 
and accepted that it was no longer necessary laboriously 
to urge them nor to argue on their behalf. 

While the period was one of steady growth in the main, 
in more than one community, societies were established 
“from the momentum of the wave of ‘charity organiza- 
tion’ which was rolling across the country,” + but before 
the field was ready for the new seed of scientific char- 
ity. This is strikingly illustrated by the early career of 
a society launched in Chicago in 1883. The long-estab- 
lished general relief society of the city, The Chicago 
Relief and Aid Society, held off from codperating with 
the new society. ‘Ten years before, it had won laurels 
for organizing relief in the emergency of the great fire, 
and it did not regard the new agency as necessary. The 
real value of codperation, true organization of charitable 
forces and resources, was little understood in the com- 
munity and the new society, overshadowed by the older 
society, was a few years later “‘benevolently assimilated” 
by it and so ceased to exist.2_ This is but one instance of 
others that might be cited of premature starts.® 

Still other societies had checkered careers through- 
out the whole period, depending for their very life on a 
few individuals. ‘Some societies in even so short a time 
had gone through three stages. The first was charac- 
terized by the adoption of material relief. In some in- 
stances the society repeated the same process of degenera- 
tion that characterized the A. I. C. P. movement during 
its later years,‘ when it was depending almost solely on 
material relief as a means of treatment. The second 
stage was marked by the abolition or reduction of mate- 


*J. R. Brackett, “Supervision and Education in Charity,” p. 131 
1903). 

7 Robert Hunter, “Relation between Social Settlements and Charity 
Organization,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. XI, p. 76 (1902). 

* During the eighties at least a dozen charity organization societies were 
organized and disbanded. 

“From a conference with Mr. Alexander Johnson. 


d 
EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT a25 


rial relief and the seeking of it by codperation with other 
benevolent agencies, and the third by the engrafting on 
the charity organization societies of such activities as 
employment agencies, and provident schemes. 
An inquiry into the causes of the various local set- 
_backs reveals several probable explanations. One was 
doubtless that of allowing the new society to drift into 
_relief-giving. A second reason was scarcity of trained 
workers. society would flourish, but if it lost the per- 
sonal influence of a good secretary or two or three lead- 
ing volunteers, it would often languish and cooperation 
and friendly visiting would languish also. Where a so- 
ciety had been able to command the services of those 


who had mastered the principles and technique of charity 


“organization, it had “taken root and won support to its | 





standards.” 2 As corroborative of this is the further evi- 
_ dence that in those societies where there had been inef- 
ficiency, the employment of a paid and expert superin- 
tendent had been found to put an end to feebleness and 
inefficiency. Of the twelve societies * that are known to 
have lapsed during the eighties, the majority were located 
in smaller towns, while of the societies that failed to 
report to the International Congress of Charities of 1893, 
most on the list were societies located in small communi- 
_ ties where the lack of trained leaders and of suitable 
friendly visitors were often conspicuous by their absence. 
In the earliest days the desire to economize coupled 
with the fear of pauperizing unfortunately caused some 
societies to be viewed as devices for saving the taxpayer, 
_ and secured for them the title “Society for the Suppres- 


*Charles D. Kellogg, “History of Charity Organization in the United 
States,” Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correction, 
zoth session, p. 63 (1893). 

? Ibid., p. 63. 

* Altoona, Pa.; Chicago; Columbus, Ohio; Dedham, Mass.; District 
of Columbia; Lowell, Mass.; Moline, Ill.; Paterson, N. J.; Princeton, 

_N. J.; Quincy, Ill.; Sandusky, Ohio; St. Joseph, Mo. 


226 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


sion of Benevolence.” Failure to educate the public to 
their true aims and methods then as now proved a con- 
siderable obstacles to progress.! 

A characteristic feature of the years under review was 
the inauguration by a number of societies of industrial 
and educational activities. Of the pioneer societies none 
surpassed that in Buffalo in the range of activities under- 
taken. To its day’s work it soon added the maintenance 
of employment bureaus, woodyards, laundries, work- 
rooms, wayfarers’ lodges, special schools, loan societies, 
penny banks, fuel societies, créches, district nursing, sick 
diet kitchens and an accident hospital. . 

Industrial agencies, such as work exchanges, wood- 
yards, workrooms and laundries soon became a dis- 
tinguishing feature of the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities.” 
The Orange Bureau of Charities not only ran a laundry, 
but sold coal and groceries to the poor as near wholesale 
price as possible. The Washington Society founded a 
school for the training of girls for domestic service, and 
established sewing classes, free kindergartens, nurseries 
and a woodyard. The Cleveland Associated Charities 
established an employment bureau in 1886 which enjoyed 
a continuous existence for a number of years.? In the 
same year the Minneapolis Society established a similar 
bureau destined to do a flourishing business, the number 
of jobs given to men and women running in one year as 


* As illustrative of this is the following sentence uttered at the eighth 
annual meeting of the New York Society, “There is, I am sorry to say, 
an impression which is not confined to a few people, that the Charity 
Organization Society which has as its motto, ‘Not alms but a friend,’ 
should have put there, ‘Neither alms nor a friend.’” Address by Rev. 
E. W. Donald, D.D., see 8th Annual Report of the Charity Organization 
Society of New York City (1890). 

* These agencies with the exception of the work exchange which op- 
erated but a few years were founded between 1883 and 1806. 

* There seems to be a tendency for such bureaus to be conducted as 
an accommodation to the public rather than as an aid to good case 
work. For this reason coupled with the belief that it is a function of 
government to provide free employment facilities, the Cleveland Society 
abolished its employment bureau in 1gr12. 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 227 


high as 10,513.’ Still other societies, especially that in 


Indianapolis, became noted for their extra activities. 

It is not surprising that a number of societies should 
have looked upon devices for the encouragement of thrift 
as a legitimate part of their program. The thrift fea- 
tures of the work of Octavia Hill had shown the possi- 
bilities of such schemes. Mention has already been made 
of the work of the Newport and Buffalo societies in this 
field. In order to develop the habit of thrift in children 
and among adults not reached by savings banks, the New 
York Society in 1888 established its Penny Provident 
Fund. By the close of the period under review approxi- 
mately twenty-five societies had instituted provident sav- 
ings banks, usually as departments of the local society. 
The system of stamp savings which was subsequently 
taken up in a number of other places was started in al- 
most every instance by charity organization societies.” 


INTEREST IN REMEDIAL LOANS 


Although the function of a loan agency is quite different 
from that of a provident fund, it is also not surprising 
that charity organization societies have ever taken an in- 
terest in the protection of small borrowers. The pawn- 
broker shop and salary loan agencies have their roots in 
the soil of necessity. They are the poor man’s bankers. 
Realizing that it is often more important that the poor 
should be able to borrow than the rich, and that the com- 
mercialized pawnbroker shop was often one of the worst 
exploiters of the poor, a number of societies soon took 
steps to aid persons in need of pecuniary assistance, by 
loans of money at interest, upon the pledge or mortgage 
of personal property. In 1888 the Relief Society of St. 


*Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Associated Charities of Minne- 


_ apolis, p. 22 (1909). 


* Joseph Lee, “Preventive Work,” Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 384 
(1900). 


228 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


Paul established a loan department on a small scale, 
while there was incorporated in Boston the Working- 
men’s Loan Association, the first company in the country 
founded as a semi-philanthropic enterprise, to lend money 
on property remaining in the possession of the borrower.* 
The latter enterprise was not launched as an organic part 
of the local Associated Charities, but came as the result 
of the initiative of its president, Robert Treat Paine, Jr., 
who had begun the experiment the year before with 
$10,000 of his own. Its plan consisted in lending money 
on chattel mortgage (almost entirely on household furni- 
ture) at a rate of one per cent. a month. It pays six 
per cent. dividends as well as taxes, and has been able 
to lay up a surplus sufficient to guarantee against danger 
from bad loans or bad times. It has proven a formidable 
competitor to all local ‘‘loan sharks.” 

By the early nineties the modern movement for the pro- 
tection of small borrowers was well begun. It was on the 
initiative of the New York Charity Organization Society, 
after it had investigated the evils of the old time unregu- 
lated pawnshop, that the founders of the Provident Loan 
Society obtained its special act of incorporation in face of 
what seemed like insurmountable opposition to the so- 
called “‘Vanderbilt pawnshop.” Thus was launched in 
1894 the Provident Loan Society, a humanitarian pawn- 
shop conducted on strict business principles in which, 
however, the lowest rate of interest is charged consistent 
with good business management, and a return of simple 
interest on money invested and in which the largest pos- 
sible encouragement is given to the redemption of pledges 
by receiving payments in instalments.? Although the 


*The company did not begin actual business until April, 1889. The 
Collateral Loan Company of Boston, a pawnshop, was organized in~ 
1859 as a business institution, but it has always contented itself with 
the payment of a reasonable dividend. 

* Beginning with a modest capital of $100,000, the society was operat- 
ing in 1918 on a contributed capital of $7,200,000. The equipment has 
increased from a one room office to twelve large offices, eleven of them 
in buildings owned by the society without mortgage. The loans in 1918 
amounted to $23,000,000. For business reasons it was organized as a 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 229 


object of the new society, as stated in its act of incor- 
poration and in its constitution, was “‘to aid such persons 
as the society shall deem in need of pecuniary assistance, 
by loans of money at interest, upon the pledge or mort- 
gage of personal property,” its real purpose has ever been 
to prevent the abuses and exploitation of the old-fash- 
ioned pawnshop and to protect those who need loans with- 
out having the kind of collateral security which would be 
demanded by an ordinary bank. In 1912 the stockhold- 
ers of the Provident Loan Society supplemented its work 
_by organizing a Chattel Loan Society, a similar institu- 
tion to make small loans upon security of mortgages on 
household furniture. 

Since the beginning of the movement for humanitarian 
loan funds, charity organization societies throughout the 
country have almost without exception either organized 
the local loan fund or cooperated actively in its organi- 
zation. It was largely the experience in remedial loan 
work begun in Baltimore mainly through the influence of 
the local charity organization society that led the Russell 
Sage Foundation to establish in 1909 its Division of 
Remedial Loans. So far as the writer is able to ascer- 
tain, charity organization societies are to-day closely in 
touch with the local member of the National Federation 
of Remedial Loan Associations? in every city in which 
one is in operation. 


THE PROBLEM OF THE HOMELESS MAN 


The unemployed able-bodied man, often without fam- 
ily, presented to the early societies a problem which 
seemed to many to require special machinery. These 


separate business. As an evidence of the historic connection between 
the two societies, each year the New York C. O. S. selects one of its 
directors. 

*An association launched in 1909 and affiliated with the National 
Conference of Social Work. Its members, though operating a business 
organization, are required to limit their possible dividends in accordance 
with the investment standard existing in their respective communities. 


230 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


societies often provided some systematic form of re- 
lief by offering employment in stone breaking, street 
work or woodyards, usually the last. These were usually 
regarded as “‘work-tests.”” Such men were often in need 
of temporary sleeping quarters. It was customary in 
many places for them to find lodging at police stations 
or in free shelters having no “‘work test.” The Philadel- 
phia Society early recognized the evils of such a solu- 
tion and so opened several wayfarers’ lodges and secured 
an act of legislature which recognized them as desirable 
substitutes for police lodgings. The law empowered 
the city authorities to close the station-houses as sleeping 
places, and gave the lodge superintendents the right to 
arrest any men who refused to do woodyard work in ex- 
change for the care given. The city authorities took advan- 
tage of this plan to reduce vagrancy and closed the station- 
houses to lodgers until they were again thrown open dur- 
ing the crisis of 1893 and 1894. Since municipal lodg- 
ing houses were largely unknown, similar wayfarers’ 
lodges were opened, often under the direct control of the 
local charity organization society, in a number of cities. 

Woodyards and temporary shelters were also fre- 
quently used to curb the evils of street begging and va- 
grancy, problems which loom large in the period under 
review. Some of the most constant work in this direction 
was that undertaken by the New York Society which, as 
early as 1883, appointed special officers to cooperate with 
the Police Department of the city in solving the problem. 
This service was continued until 1897, just previous to 
which the city established a police detail of twelve men to 
form a “‘vagrancy squad.” 4 

Doubtless a big factor in the attempts of many societies 
to rid their respective communities of the evil of giving 
indiscriminately to beggars was the fact that almost 
every citizen had been visited by the poor that beg, 
and they felt that it was important to begin their 


*See p. 313. 


re sap 
= 


. oe 


a 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 231 


propagandist work at this point, since few had ever 
visited the poor in their homes. The appreciation of this 
pedagogical principle of beginning with the known prob- 
ably explains why the suppression of begging received in 
the propagandist literature of the eighties a larger propor- 
tion of space than it received in the work itself.” 

The limitations of space forbid a more detailed re- 
hearsal of all the various ‘“‘extra” activities undertaken by 
many of the societies between 1882 and 1896. Suffice it 
to point out that societies generally during this period dis- 
closed a tendency to add to the day’s work many new 
activities whose special watchword was prevention.* 

The difference in the kinds of activities depended 
largely on the previous charitable development of the 
community in which the respective society existed.’ 
There was furthermore in most communities a scarcity 
of leadership in the social field. If the local charity 


*From the beginning the wrong done to the beggar was of course a 
controlling factor. Instead of the suppression of begging being viewed 
as a negative aspect of the work of a charity organization society, it 
is viewed as quite the opposite. ‘The first plank in a_ positive 
program,” writes Dr. Devine in his report to the National Conference of 
_ Charities and Correction in 1899, “is the awakening of a desire to change 
this unnatural and abominable relation between the beggar and his 
patron.” “Organization of Charity,” Proceedings, National Conference 
of Charities and Correction, 26th session, p. 278 (1899). 

*See Philip W. Ayers, “Relief in Work” (a study of ninety societies). 
The Charities Review, Vol. Il, p. 35 (1802). 

*James M. Pullman, “The Development of Charity Organization,” 
Lend-a-Hand, Vol. XI, p. 424 (1893). 

The Charity Organization Review, London (Feb., 1893), pointed 
out that what impressed them most in reading the views of Americans 
on social difficulties and efforts to amend them was their readiness to 
try many schemes and their energetic hopefulness. ‘There is at least 
no stagnation in their work, no tendency to keep in one groove, but a 
vigorous, quick growth, with its advantages and disadvantages. The 
field of work carried on under the auspices of their C. O. S. is enor- 
mous.” See The Charities Review, Vol. II, p. 282 (1892). 

*“Here they did so [entered upon various activities] because they 
could not secure the codperation of established agencies necessary to their 
plan; there they did so to provide instrumentalities adapted to con- 
ditions for which no previous arrangements had been made; now they 
did so from a spirit of self-aggrandizement. Hence in their reports one 
may find accounts of employment bureaus, of woodyards, of wayfarers’ 
lodges, of special schools, of loans, of fuel societies, and of grants of 
food and clothing.” D. O. Kellogg, “The Function of Charity Organi- 
zation,” Lend-a-Hand, Vol. I, p. 453 (1886). 


232 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


organization society had not led in these newer fields 
which often represented a groping desire to get back to 
some of the causes of misery, such movements would 
have doubtless died at birth. During the eighties and 
well into the nineties the field of social work was a large 
and undifferentiated one. The charity organization 
society of this period held a unique position. Many 
tasks which might then have logically come within 
its purview have since been assigned more logically and 
wisely to other organizations. Before the era of speciali- 
zation in social work there were therefore extenuating 
circumstances for the practice. Even at the time not all 
societies undertook these functions but contented them- 
selves with stimulating others to undertake them and 
many others have since discontinued them, believing that 
they absorbed too much time and energy. 

Another extenuating circumstance, at least in some 
communities was the need for popular support which 
these extra activities offered. Day nurseries, diet 
kitchens, woodyards, sewing rooms and laundries, free 
employment bureaus, and penny provident funds com- 
mended themselves to most benevolent individuals as soon 
as their objects were stated. They were all clearly prac- 
tical. The main features of charity organization, namely, 
investigation, registration, and codperation, were by no 
means so attractive at the first glance. Some charity or- 
ganization societies often gained therefrom a popular sup- 
port for their work which might otherwise have been im- 
possible. 


DISASTER RELIEF 


Charity organization societies early afforded demon- 
strations of no mean magnitude of the value of their 
methods in disaster relief.1_ Four instances are outstand- 
ing. As a result of a disastrous flood in the Ohio River 


. For a statement of the applicability of charity organization principles 
to disasters, see J. Byron Deacon, “Disasters” (1918). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 233 


valley, in 1884, the city of Cincinnati was confronted . 
with the problem of organizing at a day’s notice, a com- 
missary department for an army of 22,000 men, women 
and children driven out of their homes by the flood or 
driven to the upper stories of their houses, and whose 
ordinary sources of food were entirely cut off. To feed 
that army to begin with, and then later, another army 
as large, of men whose means of living were totally 
cut off and destroyed by the cessation of work in the bot- 
toms, was the task before the city at that time. Such, 
however, was accomplished through the local Associated 
Charities 1 which aided by citizens and a committee of 
business men who collected the funds and bought the 
provisions,” undertook the work of distribution. 

The value. of the principles of charity organization 
were again demonstrated on a relatively large scale at the 
great fire that occurred in Lynn, Mass., in 1889. The 
local Associated Charities was again immediately recog- 
nized as the one center of information and registra- 
tion. While the fire was still burning, one of the society’s 
workers, in company with the agent of the principal relief- 
giving society, canvassed the burned district and outlined 
a plan of work whose value was increased by the fact 
that many of the burned-out families were known to the 
Associated Charities. 

Again, in Louisville, after the severe tornado of 1890, 
the local society was used by the Chamber of Com- 
merce in accomplishing a most splendid piece of char- 
itable administration. The charity organization society’s 
agents served as visitors-in-chief for the guidance of 
the bands of relief workers for those made homeless. 
Every family injured was aided to the extent of its mate- 
rial loss, and a balance was left in the treasury. The New 
York Society had its first experience in emergency relief 

* Two years previous the society had gained valuable experience during 
an epidemic of smallpox. 


?W. Alexander Johnson, Familiar Letters on Charity Organization, 
The Monthly Register, Vol. VII, p. 44 (1886). 


234 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


work in the Park Place disaster of 1891. Sixty-three 
families suffered bereavement by the collapse of a build- 
ing. ‘The victim in many cases was the head of the fam- 
ily. ‘It is an indication of the esteem in which the So- 
ciety was held that both the Mayor’s relief committee 
and a leading local newspaper requested it to act as inter- 
mediary in distributing the funds of $30,000, and $7,000 
which had been raised.”! Other cases might be cited. 
Suffice it to say that before the close of the period under 
review the value of having in every community a corps 
of workers trained in scientific methods of disaster relief 
was increasingly appreciated. 


PHILANTHROPIC PUBLICATION 


Charity organization propagandist work was carried on 
during the early eighties “by the organization of confer- 
ences for the comparison of experiences and opinions, 
and for the intercourse one with another of workers and 
thinkers; by the wide correspondence entered upon; and 
by the profuse dissemination of literature.2 As early as 
1880 the Philadelphia Society began the publication of 
the Monthly Register to disseminate ‘information on_ 
questions relating to the welfare of the depressed” and 
to stir up “‘a deeper interest in benevolent works.” By 
1882 it had become the official organ of charity organiza- 
tion societies in twelve other cities. 

Although for several years thereafter’ it continued to be 
published as the organ of the movement throughout the 
country, it could not long claim a monopoly. In 1884 
the New York Society began the publication of a Monthly 
Bulletin as ‘‘a confidential communication to all its mem- 
bers and constituents.” The need of a truly official organ 


* Lilian Brandt, “The Charity Organization Society of the City of New 
York,” 1882-1907, published by the Society as its Twenty-fifth Annual 
Report, p. 30. 

7D. O. Kellogg, “The Function of Charity Organization,” Lend-a- 
Hand, Vol. I, p. 451 (1886). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 235 


for the spread of right principles and methods in char- 
itable work led in 1886 a number of the leaders of the 
charity organization societies of New York, Philadelphia 
and Boston * to cooperate with Edward Everett Hale, the 
well-known author of “A Man Without a Country,” in 
launching Lend-a-Hand, “a record of progress and jour- 
nal of organized charity.” ? It was the hope of its editor, 
Mr. Hale, that it should serve as a ‘“‘Clearing-House,” 
which should receive from every society engaged in public 
improvement an account of its achievements and of its 
wants. Although the magazine reprinted and gave added 
circulation to some good papers presented to the National 
Conference of Charities and Correction, besides current 
notes and occasional papers on charitable work, it never 
was, unfortunately, as great an influence as its editor, who 
was then, and until his death, a strong personal force in 
arousing and stimulating individuals to service.* Later 
in the decade came the unsuccessful attempt to found the 
International Record of Charities and Correction, and 
the successful publication in Chicago by Mr. Alexander 
Johnson of the Reporter of Organized Charity. Ten 
thousand copies a month were printed of the Reporter, of 
which several hundred were distributed by mail and the 
remainder by hand each month, in a different section of 
the city, so that in four months the business center and 
the north, south and west sides of the residential districts 
were covered. In spite of the fact that the venture prom- 
ised to carry itself financially, and accomplished much in 
the way of publicity, its publication was discontinued in 
a little over a year (September 1889).* 

4J%n addition to having the regular editorial assistance of the central 
directors of charity organization in New York, Philadelphia and Boston, 
assurance of the codperation of those supporting the charity organi- 
zation work in Brooklyn, Newark, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Mil- 
waukee, Cambridge, Lynn and a number of other cities was secured. 

? Lend-a-Hand, Vol. I, p. 1 (1886). 
he Brackett, “Supervision and Education in Charity,” p. 136 


33: 
*The Charity Organization Society of Chicago had promised to sub- 
scribe for 1500 copies at the rate of 50 cents per annum. However, in 


236 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


In 1888 The Council: a Monthly Essay on Organized 
Charity, began publication under the auspices of the 
short-lived “Council of Charity Officers,” to which ref- 
erence will presently be made. In the early nineties, 
the Baltimore Society launched The Charities Record,} 
a quarterly journal of the progress of Baltimore’s char- 
ities. ‘To meet the more specific need for the adequate 
expression and exchange of opinion and information in 
the field of charitable and social endeavor, the New York 
Society founded in November, 1891, with John H. Fin- 
ley as editor, The Charities Review, as a monthly maga- 
zine, “not only of local, but of national interest to all 
workers in charity and correction.” In 1897, Lend-a- 
Hand, to which reference has just been made, was merged 
with it. | 

Two books of wide influence which owe their origin 
to the movement in the period under review deserve 
mention here. They are The Tribe of Ishmael written 
by Oscar C. McCulloch in 1888, and American Charities, 
which Amos G. Warner wrote six years later. During 
years of service with the Indianapolis Society, Mr. Mc- 
Culloch had been impressed with the frequency with 
which a certain family name of central Indiana kept 
recurring in his record of ‘“‘cases.”’ Genealogical research 
revealed the fact that the progenitor of this tribe, Ben 
Ishmael (name fictitious), had been in Kentucky as far 
back as 1790, having come from Maryland through 
Kentucky. One of his sons, John, had married a half- 
breed woman and had come into Marion County, Indiana, 
about 1840. His three sons had married three sisters 
from a pauper family named Smith, having had altogether 
14 children that survived, 60 grandchildren, and 30 
great-grandchildren, who were still living at the time the 
study was made. Since 1840 this family had had a 
October, 1889, the C. O. S. amalgamated with the local Relief and Aid 
> Society (see p. 224) and the publication was discontinued. 


* After a useful existence of fourteen years the publication was dis- 
continued. 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 224 


pauper record. They had been in the almshouse, the 
House of Refuge, the Woman’s Reformatory, the peni- 
tentiaries, and had received continuous aid from the 
townships. In their family history were murderers, a 
large number of illegitimacies and of prostitutes. They 
were generally diseased. The children died young. They 
lived by petty stealing, begging and ash-gathering.1 Mr. 
McCulloch’s first-hand study of degeneracy in this family 
served to call social workers’ attention again, and this 
time in most striking fashion to the problem of feeble- 
mindedness which, like devil-grass, underran some of 
their most baffling case problems.” It has required, how- 
ever, the development of a more thorough knowledge of 
heredity with the development of mental tests to bring 
about the changes in the methods of diagnosis and treat- 
ment that are beginning to characterize much of modern 
social work with this type of case. 


*Summary from C. B. Davenport, “Heredity in Relation to Eugenics,” 
p. 234 (1911). 

* Here and there one finds evidence that individuals identified with the 
movement and even societies appreciated the significance of the heredi- 
tary factors in the problems confronting them. In 1876 Mrs. Josephine 
Shaw Lowell, later founder of the New York Charity Organization So- 
ciety wrote: “Even a casual perusal of this report [the tenth Annual 
Report of the New York State Board of Charities] will convince the 
reader that one of the most important and most dangerous causes of 
the increase of crime, pauperism and insanity is the unrestricted liberty 
allowed vagrant and degraded women.” Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, 
“One Means of Preventing Pauperism,” Tenth Annual Report, New 
York State Board of Charities (1876). 

In 1877 came the famous study by R. L. Dugdale, “The Jukes, a 
study in crime, pauperism, disease, and heredity,” first published in the 
30th annual report of the New York Prison Association in 1877. Latest 
edition, 1910. 

In 1880 the Boston society published a two page leaflet (publication 
No. 32) reprinted in 1883 entitled “How Pauperism becomes Heredi- 
tary.” 

In 1881 Mr. Seth Low, then President of the Brooklyn Bureau of 
Charities, pointed out at the National Conference of Charities and Cor- 
rection the need for care of epileptics and provision of the feeble- 
minded. 

In 1886 The Monthly Register called attention to the fact “that no 
defective or imbecile is harmless, and that the safety of posterity re- 
quires such legal isolation as shall defend these against their own defects 
and the assaults of the unprincipled.” Monthly Register, Vol. VII, 
p. 88 (1886). 


238 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


The author of the second book, Amos G. Warner, had 
been identified with charity organization work in Balti- 
more and later in the District of Columbia. His book 
American Charities, a study of philanthropy and eco- 
nomics, was the first comprehensive and authoritative 
statement of the problems of charity published in 
America. 


A FORERUNNER OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR 
ORGANIZING FAMILY SOCIAL WorRK 


In 1889 an interesting attempt was made looking 
toward standardization of charity organization methods, 
when there was organized the ‘Council of Charity Of- 
ficers,” a voluntary body composed of practically all the 
chief paid executive secretaries of the charity organiza- 
tion societies of the country. Its purpose was to pro- 
vide: 


(1) A central registration, at Buffalo, N. Y., of all trav- 
elling mendicants and impostors, based upon reports 

) from all affiliated societies in the United States. 

(2) The preparation of a telegraphic code for charitable 
inquirers. 

(3) The compilation of a primer of organized charity for 
educational use at new centers. 

(4) A plan to secure uniform information concerning 
methods and results from all kindred societies, as a 
basis for intelligent action upon the social problems 
which confront them. 

(5) An effort to introduce the teaching of Charity Or- 
ganization principles and methods into high schools, 
colleges and seminaries.? 


As a part of the above program the Council of Charity 
Officers issued a confidential circular which, among other 


* Alexander Johnson, general secretary of the Chicago Charity Or- 
ganization Society, was president and: N. E. Rosenau, general secretary 
of the Buffalo Society, was secretary. 

* Chas. D. Kellogg, “Organization of Charities,” Proceedings, National 
Conference of Charities and Correction, 14th session, p. 128 (1887). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 239 


things, disclosed big frauds, who were travelling through- 
out the country. This was distributed to the members 
of the Council only. 

As an aid to its work, The Council: a Monthly Essay 
on Organized Charity, edited by its president, was 
founded the next year (1888) under its auspices. Be- 
cause of the great demand from societies everywhere 
for tracts on the subject of charity organization, The 
Council reprinted each month some good article which 
had appeared in the Reporter, previously men- 
tioned.” 

That the “Council of Charity Officers” was ahead of 
the times is evidenced by the fact that only two socie- 
ties, namely, the C. O. S. of Terre Haute and the C. O. S. 
of New York City,? subscribed to The Council which, 
after ten numbers ceased, and the Council of Charity 
Officers came to an end with the central registration of 
mendicants and impostors as the only part of its program 
accomplished. ‘That it contained a vital idea is proven 
by the success of the National Association of Societies 
for Organizing Charity launched in 1911, on broader but 
not greatly dissimilar lines. 

Of the societies organized during the period under re- 
view, those in Denver, Colorado (1887), and St. Paul, 
Minn. (1892), deserve special mention, because of their 
unusual forms of organization. Special reference will 
also be made to the unique plan of church cooperation 
inaugurated by the Buffalo Society during the closing 
year of the period. 


*TIt was carefully kept from publication. About five or six numbers 
were issued, not more than fifty or sixty of each being printed. 

“It is estimated that one tract by Robert Treat Paine, Jr., had a 
circulation that amounted to half a million, and another four page 
leaflet by Francis Wayland of over 200,000. Letter from Mr. Alexander 
Johnson to author of date of September 18th, torq. 

*The New York Society took a thousand copies each month; 650 
were sent by mail from Chicago to its subscribers. The remaining 350 
copies were distributed from the central office of the New York Society. 
The Terre Haute Society took 200 copies a month, which it distributed 
personally as charity tracts. 


240 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


THE DENVER SYSTEM 


Although a child of the Indianapolis Society, the Den- 
ver Charity Organization Society differed markedly from 
its parent in form of organization.1 Because the busi- 
ness men of Denver demanded ‘“‘that the charitable insti- 
tutions asking aid in their work should solicit funds 
through a central agency, and should organize for ef- 
ficiency and for the prevention of duplication in their 
work,” * the new organization though bearing the name 
the Denver Charity Organization Society,* began as a 
federation of fifteen societies and institutions.’ The cen- 
tral office of these affiliated organizations, modelled some- 
what on the lines of the Indianapolis Society, performed 
the functions of a charity organization society. It, how- 
ever, did not provide for granting material relief from its 
funds. As the method of raising its funds marked the 
beginning of the introduction into this country of the 
so-called “Liverpool System” of finance, a method of 
joint appealing at one time for all the charities of a city 


*Its first president, Rev. Myron W. Reed, had had at one time a 
church in Indianapolis where he had been much impressed with the 
work of the local society under the leadership of the Rev. Oscar C. Mc- 
Culloch. 

* Twenty-third Annual Report of the Charity Organization Society of 
Denver (1910), p. 5. 

*The name was changed in 1o1z to the United Charities as more 
consistent with its form of organization. 

*In 1873 it was discovered that the 38 leading charities of Liverpool 
were being supported by only 6,600 persons when it was estimated that 
20,000 persons were able to contribute. Moreover, it was further dis- 
covered that the bulk of giving was done by about one-third of the 
givers, the same names reappearing on a great number of the lists. On 
the basis of these facts the various charities were not united in admin- 
istration but were induced to present their claims through one office 
and on one sheet. At the beginning of each year a list of charities 
guaranteed by a central committee as worthy of help is distributed to 
the charitable public, and on this sheet each subscriber sets down and 
divides at his discretion his charity subscription for the year. From 
those who are well disposed but unacquainted with any special form of 
charity, a general subscription is asked to be distributed at the discretion 
of the central committee. See Francis G. Peabody, “The Problem of 
Charity,” Charities Review, Vol. III, p. 11 (1893). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 241 


among whom the fund raised is subsequently divided, its 
details merit elaboration. The total revenue of the 
federation was distributed in monthly installments to the 
various constituent members by the executive committee. 
It was the understanding of the societies thus receiving 
money from the federation that in return for this assist- 
ance they would not solicit from the citizens who were 
contributors to the general fund. They might, however, 
ask aid of others and might accept donations from friends 
of the institutions.? 

Beside the economy of effort, it was pointed out that 
such a plan would result in a more equitable distribution 
of the so-called ‘“‘charitable fund” of the community. 
Some philanthropic enterprises by their very nature make 
a stronger appeal for popular support than others, which 
may be equally or even more socially useful. The first 
annual report of the society states that the experiment 
which was begun the year previous with some feeling of 
distrust, had proven to. be ‘‘a great boon to both the 
givers and recipients of relief.” ‘It is not,” the report 
continues, “an exaggeration to say that the amount of 
$20,000 distributed through the channels of the charity 
organizations of this city have saved the citizens of 
Denver thousands of dollars, and the relief has been 
systematic, rapid and judicious.” 

The later working of the plan revealed defects in it at 
first not noticeable. The most serious arose from the 
fact that the plan had its roots almost exclusively in a 
desire for economy and the saving of the giving public 
from annoyance. It did not sufficiently stress coopera- 
tion, community planning and high standards of work, 


*That abuses arose under this plan is attested by the fact that the 
executive committee in the course of time was compelled to pass the 
following resolution: “Believing that methods employed by individuals 
in raising money for charitable purposes threaten to discredit our in- 
stitution, be it resolved, that the various coéperating societies counsel 
with the executive committee before undertaking any plan to raise 
money.” Anon., “Organized Charity at Work: Denver,” Charities Re- 
view, Vol. X, p. 491 (1900). 


242 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


especially in the field of family case work. Even the 
plan of raising through one fund all the money for the 
social agencies of the city broke down. Although the 
money received about covered the expenses of the con- 
stituent agencies during the early nineties, the increase in 
the size of the central fund soon failed to keep pace with 
the increase of their needs.1 Where a member society re- 
ceived but a small part of its total income from the cen- 
tral fund, as was true of more than one of the affiliated 
societies, it came to view its subscription from the general 
fund as simply one of its various subscriptions, and so 
probably felt under no particular obligation to the central 
committee for its financial methods. 

Still more serious from the point of view of local family 
case work was the fact that every one of the societies, ex- 
cepting the central office to which, as already noted, were 
delegated the functions of a charity organization society, 
was free to go to non-subscribers for financial aid. With 
this contact removed and income necessarily curtailed, 
codperation between the central office and the community 
was reduced to almost a vanishing point. This resulted 
“in sucking all the life out of the central office.” * Thus 
in the depression of ’93-’94 the obligations to provide for 
the codperating societies according to their needs pre- 
vented the central office from formulating any special 
plan of emergency relief.® 

As will be noted later, the Denver Federation for Char- 


* By 1900 the proportion of funds raised by the central agency was but 
forty-five per cent. In 1o1o it was less than twenty-nine per cent. See 
Twenty-third Annual Report of the Charity Organization Society of 
Denver, p. 7 (1910). An element in this decrease seems to have been 
the acceptance of a public subsidy which was accompanied by a drying 
up, of the sources of private benevolence. 

* Quoted by L. A. Halbert in “Effective Charity Administration.” “An- 
nals of the Amer. Academy of Political and Social Science,” Vol. XLI, 
pp. 176-192 (1912). 

*“The codperating societies and institutions receive amounts according 
to their needs. With such obligations resting upon us, we were unable 
to formulate any special plan of relief last winter.” Izetta George, 
“Denver’s Plan,” Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and 
Correction, p. 55 (1894). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 243 


‘ity and Philanthropy, as it was afterward called, has in 
recent years undergone considerable reorganization. 


THE St. Paut PLAN 


The St. Paul Associated Charities, organized in 1892, 
reintroduced into the movement a plan of organization 
‘with which its name was long associated, already tried 
for short periods in Boston and Minneapolis. It will be 
tecalled that the original constitution of the Boston 
Society (that adopted provisionally in 1879) was on a 
delegate plan. In as large a city as Boston it proved too 
clumsy. The change to a board of directors was made in 
1881, although many of the features of the earlier plan 
were retained. 

Briefly, the St. Paul plan consisted in having a central 
‘council composed of representatives from those approved 
charitable institutions of the city which contributed ade- 
quately to its support. These representatives or delegates, 
with several others chosen at large and several ex-officio 
members chose the trustees of the Associated Charities 
which in turn investigated for each agency in the federa- 
tion. In time the plan outlived its usefulness in St. Paul. 
In 1914 the Associated Charities went out of existence 
and the United Charities, built on the usual C. O. S. plan 
of organization, with Board of Directors elected by mem- 
bers of the organization, was formed. 


THE CHURCH DISTRICT PLAN 


The older societies in the main adhered to their estab- 
lished forms of organization. The Buffalo Society proved 
an exception when it inaugurated the closing year of 
the period under review a system of codperation with 
local churches known in charity organization circles as 
the “Church District Plan.” It merits notice if for 
no other reason than that it was inaugurated at a time 


*See p. 434. 


244 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


when “the lack of intimate relations with the churches 
was especially noticeable” ? not only in Buffalo, but quite 
generally throughout the country.’ 

The Buffalo Society had succeeded in enrolling prac- 
tically no friendly visitors, although many churches were 
using friendly visitors with their own poor families. Even 
when such families were known to the society’ there was 
no connection between the society and the visitor. Fur- 
thermore, there were no relief societies in the city, except 
those for special classes, like the Hebrew Board of Char- 
ities. The problem of finding adequate relief for de- 
pendent families was a grave one. The Charity Organiza- 
tion Society had funds for emergency aid only, and the 
city fund was not too carefully administered. On the 
other hand, the relief work of many of the churches did 
not begin to exhaust their means. The wealthiest 
churches had the fewest poor, and had undertaken little 
work outside their own membership. Moreover, the re- 
lief work of many of the churches when not confined 
to their own poor, was often done scatteringly and un- 
systematically. There was practically no concentration 
of effort upon definite areas, and consequently much 
overlapping of work. Moreover, of the type of con- 
structive social work represented by settlements and boys’ 
clubs, the city had practically none. Lacking this, and 
also friendly visitors, the Society could not bring to bear 
upon the poor the continuous personal influence which is 
often so great an aid to self-help. An added reason for 
seeking the cooperation of the churches was a more or less 
general distrust of the local Charity Organization Society, 
because of its emphasis upon investigation and registra- 
tion. In short, it was the recognition of the fact that 
churches constitute a source of most harmful relief when 


* Brackett, Jeffery R., “The Charity Organization Movement,” Chari- 
ties Review, Vol. IV, p. 395 (1895). 

*This was before the modern movement for the socialization of the 
church as represented in the Federal Council of Christian Churches in 
America. In 1911 we find the first organic relation between the National 
Conference of Social Work and the church. 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 245 


uncooperative,’ and a great help in treatment both as a 
source of material relief and as a channel through which 
to enlist the services of volunteers and friendly visitors 
that led the Buffalo Society to evolve its “Church Dis- 
sact Plan.’ ? 

The plan consisted in dividing the city into over one 
hundred districts, with special reference to the location of 
churches and relieving agencies. The districts were so 
small that few involved the care of more than a dozen 
families. For this reason the work of the churches in 
their districts could be individual.* Each district was 
assigned to a church. The churches entering the plan 
agreed to care for every family otherwise uncared for by 
an individual, organization or other church. When a 
family needing care had a definite church connection that 
church was asked to provide the necessary visitor and 
such needed material relief as it could afford. Each 
church accepting a district promised to assume a special 
responsibility for the moral elevation of its district, 
through friendly visiting to referred families and such 
other agencies as settlements, clubs, classes, etc., as it 


*“The duty of the Church to dependency must be defined before any 
community can treat, ameliorate, and control it in a logical and thought- 
ful way.” Frank Tucker, “The Report of the Committee on the Care 
and Relief of Needy Families in their Homes,” Charities, Vol. VII, p. 44, 
(1901). 

To a large extent . . . the churches and religious societies pursue an 
antiquated and short-sighted policy, giving relief from sentimental mo- 
tives without personal knowledge of its effect upon those who receive 
it, and oftentimes in the hope that possible converts may be attracted 
through this means. The criticism applies with particular force to mis- 
sions, to posts of the Salvation Army, Church Army Volunteers, and 
other organizations which aim to reach the outcast and the neglected, 
and is defended on the ground that in no way can they gain the atten- 
tion and confidence of those whom they would rescue. E. T. Devine, 
“Principles of Relief,” pp. 329-336 (1904). 

* For the statements just made as to the status of the charity organiza- 
tion work in Buffalo, many of which are almost verbatim, the author is 
indebted to a paper read by Mr. Porter R. Lee, then Assistant Secretary 
of the Buffalo Society, at the 29th Annual Meeting of the Society, held 
1906. See Tenth Annual Report of the Committee on Cooperation of 
the Charity Organization Society of Buffalo, pp. 20-21 (1906). 

*In roog the number of districts was reduced to 37. Thirty-fourth 
Annual Report p. 6 (1911). 


2 46 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


could establish. In all districts the Charity Organization 
Society made the original investigation itself, but after 
that surrendered the family absolutely.? 

Space will not permit a detailed account of the diffi- 
culties encountered in working out the plan, nor a re- 
hearsal of their adjustment,” but it remains to add in this 
connection that, by 1g9o1, five years after the plan began, 
25 more churches had accepted districts, and in 1903 
thirty more; in 1906 there were 122 cooperating 
churches. Of the English-speaking churches there was 
hardly one of importance which was not included. Twen- 
ty-seven churches in the well-to-do district of the city 
had had previous connection with the district chosen, 
through chapels, missions, or otherwise. By 1906, six 
social settlements with residents, and six social centers 
without residents had been opened by the codperating 
churches. Of the 165 friendly visitors which the society 
could then claim, 85 had been assigned by denomina- 
tional churches or were men and women who had them- 


*Comment on this plan can be found in Washington Gladden’s “The 
Christian Pastor,” pp. 467-473 (1898); in his “Social Salvation,” 
pp. 46-49 (1902); and in Charities, Vol. VII, p. 204 (1901). 

“At first the mechanism of the plan was faulty; neglect was not 
promptly corrected, and district committees often hesitated or refused 
to refer families to some churches because the charity work of some of 
the churches was so unintelligent, doubling the labor of the committee 
referring the case, and by delay frequently increasing the suffering of 
the poor. 

A rule was adopted in 1899 abolishing the discretion of the district 
committees and requiring the reference of all families residing within 
the assigned districts. The stand the Society took in the matter was 
that if apathy, indolence and ignorance existed among some of the 
churches, it was the function of the C. O. S. to transmute apathy into 
interest, indolence into responsible activity and ignorance into wise char- 
ity. A committee on cooperation met monthly to hear complaints, and 
poor cooperation was reported at once to the member of the committee 
who represented the denomination concerned, without waiting for the 
monthly meeting. 

In ro11 there were 37 churches of all denominations who were un- 
dertaking to supply friendly visitors, and if possible money aid for 
neglected poverty of any faith within their districts. During the year 
details of the plan were improved. The belief was expressed that the 
plan could never be what it should be until the Society had a special 
church secretary to give it the attention it deserved. See Thirty-fourth 
Annual Report of the Society, pp. 16-17 (1911). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 247 


selves made the first contact with their families. The 
‘churches’ distrust of the Charity Organization Society 
was materially changed as evidenced by the increasing 
number of investigations which the society made at the 
request of individuals and churches. 

In spite of all that the plan accomplished and its 
promise of still greater things in the way of church 
cooperation in community work it did not come up to 
expectations. Except in conspicuous instances, the 
churches were able to raise little relief except for any but 
their own poor. By too1 the Charity Organization So- 
ciety had raised considerably its own standard of relief 
giving. Subsequently, if a family requiring liberal contin- 
uous aid was assigned to a church of small means, the So- 
ciety had to come to its rescue.’ 

Organizing churches for social service has been tried 
elsewhere but its success has been uneven. In 1898 there 
was a movement started in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
by a clergyman of the city looking toward the introduc- 
tion of the Church District Plan. Although the Asso- 
ciated Charities stood ready to codperate, the plan never 
developed much beyond a paper status. In 1903 there 
was a local adaptation of the plan in the northern district 
of Brooklyn where twenty-three of the fifty churches 
united to provide friendly visitors, each in a definite 
district. The plan was subsequently abandoned. On 
the other hand, in 1914 a Social Service Church Union 
was organized in Indianapolis, not as a separate organiza- 
tion, but as an instrument to supplement and extend the 
work of the local charity organization society. In a short 


*Frederic Almy, “Codperation of Churches in Charity,” Charities, 
Vol. VII, p. 205 (1901). 

By to19 the Church District Plan had practically gone out of 
use in Buffalo for several reasons. In a letter to the author under date 
of September 20th, 1919, Mr. Frederic Almy, Secretary of the Buffalo 
Charity Organization Society, said of it, “It has been a service in bring- 
ing much closer contact with many churches who used to look askance 
and I still believe it would work with fine results, if not on too large a 
scale, and with a competent secretary.” 


248 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


time seventy-eight churches, including Protestant, Cath- 
olic, Jewish and Unitarian, joined in the work, making a 
total of nearly 300 laymen engaged in social work through 
this one organization. 


THE INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION OF 1893-1894 


One of the most severe tests to which the movement 
for the organization of charity has ever been subjected, 
came when the panic of 1893, with its subsequent indus- 
trial depression, swept over the entire United States. 
Forty per cent. of the manufacturing establishments of 
the country shut down.t Making all due allowance for 
the tendency to exaggerate the number of unemployed 
which, with the hysteria usually accompanying a crisis, 
manifested itself in some quarters in the larger cities of 
the country, notably New York ? and Boston,’ the amount 
of unemployment was unprecedented. Historically this 
was the first time the homeless man figured largely in 
our national life. He became a national issue. It was the 
era of Coxey’s and Kelly’s and other industrial armies. 
The question of how work could be furnished for the un- 
employed was raised on all sides. It should be borne in 
mind that in spite of the vast numbers added to the ranks 
of charity, a study of the conditions showed, ‘‘to the im- 
mense credit of all concerned, that the workingmen and 
women understood their own business exceedingly well.” 
In the main they did take care of themselves.* It was only 

‘Wilbur F. Crafts, “The New Charity and the newest,” Charities 
Review, Vol. V, p. 21 (1895). 

* Editorial,, Lend-a-Hand, Vol. XIII, pp. 5-6 (1894). 

°“Emergency Work in Boston during Winter 1893-1894,” Lend-a- 
Hand, Vol. XIII, pp. 6-7 (1894). 

*“Unemployed,” Lend-a-hand, Vol. XII, p. 126 (1894). “But 
few union men apply for relief,’ the Central Relief Association of 
Chicago reported at the close of its activities in the emergency period 
of ’93 and ’94. “The majority of those who apply for and receive 
help from charitable institutions, or who worked for the Central Relief 
Association during the winter of ’94,” the report adds, “were men who 


have no trade, or are not well fitted to make a living at times when 
there is great depression in business.” Report of the Central Relief 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 249 


the long depression following the panic which gradually 
ate into the savings of the self-supporting that brought 
aS many as were compelled to accept charitable relief.’ 
Although the number of places in which charity organi- 
zation societies gained permanent footholds in 1893 ex- 
ceeded the record held by any previous year since the 
beginning of the movement,” there were still less than one 
hundred societies throughout the entire country. The 
oldest of these were not two decades old, while more 
than half the number of societies had been in 
existence less than a decade. The burdens cast upon all 
were almost overwhelming. Except in these communi- 
ties, the industrial depression that all but paralyzed in- 
dustry, found the American people without any system of 
employment exchanges, and either without any machinery 
to handle a relief situation or with machinery so anti- 
quated or inadequate as to be unequal to the strain placed 
upon it. In many of these communities as in the early 
seventies, relief was distributed in a reckless way, with 
several agencies dispensing in the same territory, dupli- 
cating, overlapping, wasting and, above all, often over- 
looking the most necessitous cases. The contrast pre- 
sented by different communities in their efforts to meet 
the situation is most instructive. One or all of three 
general lines of action were used to meet the situation. 


CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETIES AND 
THE DEPRESSION 


First, there was the work of the permanent societies, 
notably the charity organization societies, relief or- 


Association to the Civic Federation, to Its Contributors and the Public, 
p. 31. There were doubtless many who refused assistance because of 
the belief that “charity” was a concession by wealth to labor. See 
Editorial, Lend-a-Hand, Vol. XIII, p. 5 (1894). 

*In New York City over $2,000,000 was withdrawn from a single 
savings bank. 

*This was due in part to the threatening storm of relief problems and 
also to the interest aroused in charity organization at the International 
Congress of Charities and Correction held in Chicago in 1893. 


250 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


ganizations and the churches which roused themselves 
to enlarged operations. In some places, as in New 
York City, a conference was held early in the fall of 
93 on the invitation of the Charity Organization Society 
at which the leading relief societies “united in a state- 
ment given to the public through the press, forecasting the 
probable demands of the winter and urging ‘the charitably 
disposed’ to make their gifts through the established char- 
ities of the city rather than by the indiscriminate alms 
which would ‘inevitably tend to pauperize the recipients 
as well as to attract to the city an army of vagrants, in 
addition to numbers of the unemployed of other 
places.’ ” ? | : 
Where possible, charity organization societies employed 
many extra workers and utilized volunteer visitors. 
The administrative work of the Associated Charities in 
Boston more than doubled during the year. In New York 
the local society increased its working force about 50 
per cent. and its expenses in the same proportion, includ- 
ing the establishment of an “Emergent Relief Guaran- 
tee,” a fund to which $2,275 was pledged for the benefit 
of applicants to the society for whom adequate and suit- 
able assistance could not be obtained from the usual char- 
itable agencies. Even with enlarged forces the established 
agencies often found themselves greatly handicapped by 
the attitude of the press. In Boston, where an appeal 
deprecating the establishment of new agencies of relief 
and urging the public to contribute more liberally of 
money and personal service than ever before to the exist- 
ing charities, was both published in nearly all the news- 
papers and widely distributed as a circular, the warning 
was not generally heeded, especially by the newspapers of 
the city. In New York City the newspapers set forth 
their own and others’ undertakings in supplying free food, 
garments, shelter. ‘There was much of boastful publicity 
*Lilian Brandt, “The Charity Organization Society of the City of 


New York,” 1882-1907, published as the Twenty-fifth Annual Report 
of the Society, pp. 34-35 (1907). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 251 


_and fulsome self-adulation attending the schemes set on 
foot by journals, with the exception of the Tribune Coal 
and Food Fund. They drew crowds to their doors, com- 
posed of those who blushed at the exposure of their con- 
dition, or still more copiously of those who had long since 
ceased to blush. They sent wagons blazoned with their 
names and errands into crowded tenement streets, and 
called aloud the names of those for whom they had a 
charity package. In a word, they surrounded their work 
with conditions that repelled real merit, and lured the 
shameless to their doors and carts.” . . .4 

The result in New York City was that the distress 
native to the city, augmented by that attracted from the 
outside by these methods was such that the local Charity 
Organization Society found it impossible to record all the 
applicants who came: ‘The ‘alms of direction’ alone 
could be given to many hundred cases.”’? On the other 
hand in Philadelphia where there was less advertisement 
in the papers, less proclaiming to the poor that great 
things were being done for them and less tacit invitation 
to them to come on and be helped than in many other 
cities, the result was that, although destitution was wide- 
spread, and much suffering occurred, distress was re- 
lieved, and there was very little subsequent increase 
in pauperism.* The Citizens’ Permanent Relief Com- 
mittee, on which served representatives from the leading 
family agencies handled in the main the relief of the 
unemployed while the current work of the Society for 
Organizing Charity, though larger in volume, was carried 
on with effectiveness and without interruption. 

To offset the pernicious influence of the newspapers 
and those well-intentioned but misguided citizens who 

*Charles D. Kellogg, “The Situation in New York City During the 
Winter of 1893-1894,” Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and 


Correction, 21st session, p. 29 (1894). See also Charities Review, Vol. 


HI, pp. 239-243 (1893). 
2 Ibid. D230 
° Frederic Almy, “The Problem of Charity,” Charities Review, Vol. 


IV, p. 172 (1895). 


252 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


advertised large relief funds for the unemployed, local 
societies in several instances, as in Louisville and New 
York City, erected Wayfarers’ Lodges and laid in a large 
supply of wood, which was used to good advantage. The 
delay of the city authorities in providing a Municipal 
Lodging House, authorized by a statute, compelled the 
New York Society to open in November, 1893, a Way- 
farers’ Lodge in connection with its wood-yard, a model 
of its kind for that day, built from plans prepared after 
a careful investigation of similar buildings in Boston, 
Philadelphia, New Haven and Washington. It was 
utilized to the limit of its capacity. At the suggestion of 
the Society for several weeks, beginning the following 
January, all police station lodgers were regularly taken to 
court each morning and committed to the Commissioners 
of Charities and Correction for such treatment as the 
circumstances of each required, with the result of greatly 
reducing the number of ‘“‘rounders” and controlling tem- 
porarily this form of indiscriminate relief.’ 

It need hardly be added that where a society as in 
Minneapolis maintained a free employment bureau, it was 
besieged by applicants for work. Here, unfortunately, as 
in the case of similar bureaus elsewhere, the number of 
jobs available decreased as the number of applicants in- 
creased. 


TEMPORARY ORGANIZATIONS EMPLOYING CHARITY 
ORGANIZATION METHODS 


From the beginning, the problem was so largely one of 
unemployment that plans of relief through work were 
early put into operation, since experience had taught that 
relief without work is demoralizing and free soup kitchens 
and bread lines vicious. As the task was so great in cer- 


*Lilian Brandt, “The Charity Organization Society of the City of 
New York,” 1882-1907, published as the 25th Annual Report of the So- 
ciety, p. 36 (1907). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 253 


tain larger cities, temporary organizations were formed 
and managed by persons skilled in the methods of char- 
ity organization and in ways of finding remunerative labor 
for those in need. In some instances charity organization 
societies themselves provided work.! ‘These efforts 
constituted the second general line of action used to meet 
the situation. 

Noteworthy among the temporary organizations formed 
were the East Side Relief Work Committee in New York 
City, the Central Relief Association in Chicago, the Citi- 
zens’ Permanent Relief Committee ? in Philadelphia and 
the Relief Committee of the Commercial Club of Indian- 
apolis. 


THE EAstT SIDE RELIEF COMMITTEE 


The East Side Relief Work Committee was composed 
with few exceptions of representatives of such perma- 
nent bodies as settlements, churches, a district commit- 
tee of the Charity Organization Society and a conference 
of St. Vincent de Paul. During the winter of 1893-94 this 
wisely conceived temporary committee did yeoman serv- 
ice in providing employment in workshops and else- 
where for some five thousand persons in New York 


*For example, in Philadelphia the eighth and ninth ward associations 
of the Society set men to work cleaning some four hundred alleys and 
passageways of these wards, which it was not customary for the city 
to clean except when declared nuisances by the Board of Health. A 
special appeal for funds to carry on the work was issued. The response 
Was prompt and liberal and half as much again as was asked for. The 
success and simplicity of the plan caused it to spread rapidly to neigh- 
boring wards. Joseph G. Rosengarten, “A Successful Experiment in 
Utilizing Labor,” Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and 
Correction, pp. 58-62 (1894). 

At least nine societies in 1893-1894 and seven (some the same) in 
1894-1895, provided emergency relief by work. By 1895 at least 
seventeen societies—a noticeable increase—maintained woodyards, work- 
rooms or other agencies for directly providing relief by work. Jeffrey 
R. Brackett, “The Charity Organization Movement,” Charities Review, 
Vol. IV, p. 395 (1895). 

7In spite of the name, the Philadelphia Committee as augmented for 
the particular purposes of the emergency was a temporary organiza- 
tion. 


254 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


City.1 “It is reported by the charitable societies of the 
city that those who were aided by that Committee have 
very rarely been found since that winter among appli- 
cants for charitable relief.””* Never before had charity 
organization principles been more effectively followed 
than by this organization, though but of a temporary 
nature.? ‘“‘However necessary and useful in an emer- 
gency” such method of alleviating distress may have 
been it was nevertheless pointed out that it ‘should 
be adopted only under abnormal conditions,’ * such as 
existed in New York at the time. 

As a result of the efforts of a number of public-spirited 
citizens, including clergymen and laymen, representing 
several Protestant bodies, the Roman Catholic Church 
and the Jewish faith, in the spring of 1894 the New York 
Employment Society was organized. Its purpose was the 
registration of men, the investigation of their references, 
as far as possible, and the securing of positions for those 
whose references for .ability and character were satis- 
factory. It was a recognition of the fact that the problem 
of the able-bodied unemployed is not one for which the 
local charity organization society alone has respon- 
sibility. 


THE CENTRAL RELIEF ASSOCIATION OF CHICAGO 


With characteristic large-heartedness Chicago at first 
invited all who had no money to come and buy food and 
lodging ‘without money and without price.” Contempo- 


*For a carefully prepared statement of the essential features of the 
relief measures undertaken by this committee, see Josephine Shaw Lowell, 
“Five Months’ Work for the Unemployed,” Charities Review, Vol. III, 
Pp. 323 (1893). For a condensed statement of the foregoing, see Edward 
T. Devine, “Principles of Relief,’ pp. 412-419 (1904). , 

*E. T. Devine, “Principles of Relief,” p. 463 (1904). 

* Charles D. Kellogg, “The Situation in New York City during the 
Winter of 1893-94,” Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and 
Correction, 21st session, p. 29 (18094). 

*Josephine Shaw Lowell, “Five Months’ Work for the Unemployed,” 
Charities Review, Vol. III, p. 336 (1893). 


" 


i" ' 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 255 


raneous evidence indicates that the publicity given to 


_ her “good works” became in effect an advertisement for 
tramps. The “small dram-shops did:an unusually flour- 


ishing business and the place became a Mecca for tramps 
and vagrants.” 1 There was at this time in Chicago no 
charity organization society, nor had there been since 
1886, when it had been ‘“benevolently assimilated” by 


_ the local Relief and Aid Society. However, with sound 
sense, the good people, seeing the mistake of their ‘‘open- 
_ house” policy, faced about, organized December 14, 1893, 
a Central Relief Association, made willingness to work a 


test of “worthiness,” divided the town into districts, and 
sent visitors out to find the needy in their homes. It was 


_ not the object of the Association to dispense material relief 
directly, but relieve distress as far as possible through 


existing organizations. Where these were wanting in effi- 
ciency, it stood ready to relieve directly or through other 
agencies to be created. Its plan of giving men an oppor- 
tunity to return a fair equivalent in work for food, 


lodging and clothing proved ‘a most satisfactory 
method” ? of dealing with the men who were floating 


about the city, many of whom were single men without 
homes. 

An effort was promptly made so to regulate and 
systematize the operating of free soup houses, that a 
suitable labor test might be exacted of all who were 
fed and sheltered. The Association assumed control 
of several kitchens, where substantial food was exchanged 
for a quota of work on the streets. These kitchens, 
after having served well their purpose, were closed in the 
early spring. In view of the hindrance which the press 
had been in some communities, it is of interest to note 


_that the Association acknowledged publicly that “its task 


would have been hopeless, but for the powerful aid cheer- 


* Anon., “Relief by Extra Public Service,’ The Charities Review, Vol. 
III, p. 133 (1894). 2 ; 

*Report of the Central Relief Association to the Civic Federation, to 
its Contributors and the Public, p. 14. 


256 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


fully rendered by the daily press in printing full reports 
of the work, and in donating space for notices explana- 
tory of its needs and purposes.” ? 

Out of the organization whose. activities in behalf of 
the needy during the winter of 1893 and 1894 have just 
been described, there developed the Bureau of Charities, 
formally launched in 1894 as the residuary legatee of the 
emergency relief work just described.? 

Established with the backing not only of some represen- 
tative business men, but of leaders in the recently estab- 
lished University of Chicago, and in the social settlements, 
the new Bureau at once took a position of prominence 
which otherwise it could have reached but slowly. The 
part played by the settlements of Chicago in assisting 
the new “Bureau of Charities” is of interest, for although 
“settlement work historically grew out of charity organi- 
zation,’ ® residents of settlements were not always in 
sympathy with charity organization methods then pre- 
vailing. Their support in this instance was due, ac- 
cording to Robert Hunter, to the absolute necessity of 
having some organization of the charities of Chicago 
“because the settlements wished to free themselves from 
the pressure of relief work which was interfering with 
their own special activities.” + Since then, in Chicago 
as elsewhere, there has been a growing recognition of the 
differentiation of the fields that the two movements 

* Report of the Central Relief Association to the Civic Federation, to 
its Contributors and the Public, p. 5 (1894). 

*The name “Bureau of Charities’ was derived from the bureau of 
charities of the local Civic Federation which had played an active part 
in the organization of the above-mentioned Central Relief Association. 
The fostering of the new society by the Civic Federation had very 
considerable advantages in giving standing and consideration to its 
work, which must have come much more slowly had the movement 
been a separate and independent one. Merged in 1902 with the Chicago 
Relief and Aid Society, the charity organization society of the city 
has since been called the “United Charities.” 

*Quotation from Mr. Woods, see article by Robert W. deForest, 


“Twenty-five Years and After,” Charities and the Commons, Vol. XIX, 


p. 1135 (1907). 
*Robert Hunter, “Relation between Social Settlements and Charity 
Organization,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. XI, p. 76 (1902). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT ; 257 


occupy, and with it has come a mutual recognition of 


the value of the work of each. 

The program of the Bureau included the usual aims 
and objects of a charity organization society with an 
important addition for so large a city as Chicago, viz., 
“that for the first time the definite plan of friendly visit- 


ing was to be made a systematic part of so large a work.” ! 


This was in contrast to the work being done at the time in 
London and New York, cities of comparable size, in 
neither of which was emphasis placed on friendly visiting. 
In spite of high hopes, friendly visiting never played the 


role in the work of the Bureau that these founders had 


hoped. 


THE CITIZENS’ PERMANENT RELIEF COMMITTEE IN 
PHILADELPHIA 


Although a number of irresponsible relieving agencies 
sprang into existence during the first excitement of the 
depression, their careers were brief. The Citizens’ Per- 
manent Relief Committee, of which the Mayor was 
ex-officio chairman, organized to act for the citizens of 
Philadelphia in such catastrophies as the Charleston 
earthquake and the Johnstown flood, in response to a 
very general demand unanimously decided to lend its 
aid in the emergency. It added to its number representa- 
tives from several leading social agencies, including the 
Society for Organizing Charity. The committee then 
raised an emergency fund, the only one of importance 
in the city. 

From the first, its work was surrounded by many of 
the safeguards essential to charity organization. The 
district system was adopted at the start and each district 
chairman was rigidly confined to his own boundaries; 
large visiting corps were organized and, after the first 


*Anon., “Outlook in Chicago,” The Charities Review, Vol. V, p. 295 
(1896). 


258 , CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


grant of relief, further aid was conditioned upon the 
favorable report of the visitor; and, whenever practicable, 
employment was given rather than relief without labor. 
All these features of the Committee’s plan were advocated 
by the experienced charity workers with whom they took 
counsel. Thus with a special fund of less than $150,000, 
13,000 families and 6,700 individuals were relieved, be- 
sides many thousands of men and women being furnished 
with work. It is interesting to note that, although in sev- 
eral cities with smaller populations than Philadelphia, the 
funds raised by subscription were much larger and were 
augmented by a lavish outpouring of municipal relief, 
there was no effort made to revive the old plan of munici- 
pal outdoor relief which had been abolished fourteen years 
earlier, largely through the efforts of the local Society for 
Organizing Charity. 


THE RELIEF COMMITTEE OF THE COMMERCIAL CLUB OF 
INDIANAPOLIS 


Some of the most efficient relief work of the winter 
of 1893-94 was undertaken in Indianapolis. A series of 
public meetings was held “of idle men whose express 
purpose was to attract public attention to the need, then 
rapidly becoming more and more distressing, of working 
people who had been out of employment for several 
months.” + At one of these meetings a committee was 
appointed to appear before the directors of the Commer- 
cial Club of Indianapolis and a special committee of the 
Club was appointed as a result of this appeal. This com- 
mittee submitted its report to the directors in November, 
“emphasizing the idea that relief should be given in a 
way that would enable recipients to earn it; that as a first 
step there should be an appeal to citizens to give employ- 


*Report of Relief for the Unemployed in pee ie 1893-945 
quoted by E. T. Devine, “Principles of Relief,” p. 420 (1904). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 259 


ment wherever they could, however little it might be. 
The methods suggested were: 


I. Registration of unemployed. 
II. Efforts to secure temporary employment for them 
through public contracts and such work as could be 
provided by citizens. 
Ill. Leniency toward worthy persons known to be unable 
; to meet their obligations for rent, to building asso- 
ciations, etc. 
IV. Protection to home laborers from an influx of out- 
side workingmen seeking employment. 
V. The establishment, when it became necessary, of a 
place where substantial food could be bought at a 
nominal price. 


The report was concurred in by the directors of the 
club, a public meeting of the unemployed and the Mayor.” ! 
It was generally believed that the local society alone could 
not handle the increasing demands that the depression 
had brought. The special committee of the Commercial 
Club was accordingly continued as a permanent com- 
mittee to carry out the above recommendations. 


“At first it was announced,” continues Dr. Devine in 
his account of the work of the committee, “that contri- 
butions for relief were not desired, and efforts were di- 
rected mainly to procuring employment. In the mean- 
time, the committee representing the unemployed, chosen 
at one of their public meetings, had undertaken to pro- 
vide relief until the permanent committee could take up 
the work. They were, however, asked to discontinue this 

*E. T. Devine, “Principles of Relief,’ p. 420. For a more complete 
account of how Indianapolis met the relief problem of 1893-94, see 
“Principles of Relief,’ pp. 419-431, which is based on the Report of 
the Commercial Club Relief Committee, 1893-94. 

*The report stated that the committee “found little foundation for 
any complaint or criticism” of the Charity Organization Society of 


Indianapolis. See Anon., “Charity Organization Societies,’ The Chari- 
ties Review, Vol. III, p. 147 (1894). 


260 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


when arrangements had been made by the permanent 
committee for the relief of destitution through the agency 
of the Charity Organization Society. The report of the 
committee says that ‘in asking the society to temporarily 
take up this part of the work the committee desired that 
the ability of the organized agencies for the relief of dis- 
tress should be tested before proceeding with other plans. 
The usual methods of charity work were not applied to 
the unemployed class who were referred to them.’ All 
cases of need which were thereafter reported were looked 
after by the Charity Organization Society, which ex- 
pended about $4,000 in such emergency relief. The com- 
mittee pledged itself to reimburse the treasury of the so- 
ciety, so that it would not be without funds to carry on 
its usual charitable work during the remainder of the year. 
This enabled the committee to supply food where neces- 
sary, without making an immediate public appeal for that 
purpose. Any effort to raise funds by benefits on a per- 
centage basis was discouraged.” 1 


Registration on a systematic plan was soon begun and 
some 1,200 applicants for work were registered in the 
following three weeks. Temporary employment was 
provided by citizens and private contractors for about 
one-fifth of these applicants. ‘This source of employ- 
ment thus proved inadequate and had later to be sup- 
plemented by other means. Applicants to the Charity 
Organization Society who had not registered at the bureau 
were sent there to give some evidence of willingness to 
work before relief was given, and on the other hand, the 
committtee in charge of the employment bureau referred 
to the Society those who, in registering, stated that they 
were in immediate need. 

A food market was opened the end of December, at 
which time the Charity Organization Society was supply- 
ing food to nearly a thousand families. The Society’s 
available funds were then exhausted and those who had 


*E. T. Devine, “Principles of Relief,” p. 421 (1904). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 261 


been supplied with food were thereafter referred to the 
food market, the secretary of the Society certifying that, 
“according to the best obtainable information, they were 
residents of Indianapolis who belonged to the unem- 
ployed class, and were entitled to the credit offered to 
persons in need.” Account books were issued to all 
applicants at the market. These contained “a copy of an 
agreement which the applicants were required to sign, 
pledging themselves to pay on demand such sums as 
might become due from them, or, whenever called upon 
to do so by the committee, to perform such work as 
might be required of them at 12% cents per hour, to be 
applied to the payment of their indebtedness for supplies. 
This was to be the rate of pay for common labor only; if 
skilled. work should be required, it was agreed that a 
special rate of pay would be allowed.” . . . “In the 
selection of the kinds of food supplied the committee 
sought to obtain the most wholesome and nutritious at 
the lowest cost. Wholesale dealers readily agreed, when 
called upon to sell to the committee at first cost, thus 
saving the committee a large sum of money. Purchasers 
were given the full benefit of this saving, the charge 
being almost exact cost rate, exclusive of expenses of 
administration.”2 . . . Arrangements were made 
to supply coal to those in need of fuel. Shoes were also 
supplied from the market, principally, however, old shoes 
collected by solicitors, who made a house-to-house canvass 
for this purpose. 

“The expectation that the city might be able to provide 
employment on public work with compensation from 
the city treasury was not fulfilled. The committee finally 
offered to furnish the labor at its command for public 
work with the understanding that compensation would 
be made from the relief funds.”* This was the plan fol- 
lowed, the work including street cleaning, excavation for 


*E. T. Devine, “Principles of Relief,” p. 423. 
* Ibid., p. 425. 
* Ibid., p. 426. 


262 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


a lake in a public park and removing snow from street 
gutters. 

At the end of the season the books of the market 
“showed an aggregate indebtedness of a comparatively 
small amount—less than $1,000, exclusive of the accounts 
with widows—from persons who had failed to perform 
the required work.” The market was gradually closed 
during the month of March with the codperation of the 
Charity Organization Society in taking over those who re- 
mained on the lists when the closing was finally effected. 

A contemporaneous account of the winter’s work in 
Indianapolis states, “An ‘ample supply of food’ is sent 
each week to dependent families, at a cost of about $1 
a week for a family of four. The work is affirmed to be 
conducted ‘in such a way that no person residing in 
Indianapolis need suffer for food.’ At the same time the 
committee is prepared to deal vigorously with tramps 
and impostors, and no abnormal influx seems to have 
been brought about. The most noticeable feature in the 
measure adopted is the attempt to prevent by codpera- 
tion any duplication of assistance, imposition, and ‘an 
untimely exhaustion of the charitable forces which it is 
necessary to conserve in every way possible, to enable 
the great burden to be borne throughout the time of 
neediy77* 

The Indianapolis plan of giving wages, not in money 
but in supplies, was considered by many at the time an 
improvement over payment in money because the city of - 
Indianapolis, buying at wholesale, could give more sup- 
plies in place of wages than the man employed could have 
bought if he had received the money. The wisdom of 
this plan was questioned by some in view of its possible 
demoralizing effect on self-respect.2 Except for this 
possible criticism, the method of handling an extremely — 


*“Unemployed,” Lend-a-Hand, Vol. XII, p. 132 (1804). 
“Frederic Almy, “The Problem of Charity,” Charities Review, Vol. 
IV, pp. 171-172 (1895). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 263 


difficult problem was unusually well met, and clearly 
demonstrated the wisdom of the methods of charity or- 
ganization in so far as they could be applied to a situation, 
the main element of which was unemployment. 


IRRESPONSIBLE EMERGENCY AGENCIES 


The third general line of action used to meet the situa- 
tion was characterized by emergency funds created under 
a management largely responsible to no one but their 
projectors. Citizens’ committees and spontaneous char- 
itable organizations, accountable to no one as to methods 
or finance, sprang up over night. Frequently, as in New 
York City, local newspapers who often exploited the 
distress of the poor for its advertising value, launched 
projects of one kind or another. Fortunate indeed was 
the community that was free from such mushroom enter- 
prises. For unwise projects as well as for plans laid on 
better lines, the amount of money available was some- 
thing unprecedented. Three million dollars were spent 
in so-called charity in New York City alone.} 


LESSONS OF THE DEPRESSION 


The experiences of 1893-94 taught many valuable 
although expensive lessons in regard to the problems of 
relief, “‘for the sins then committed in the name of charity 
were many and serious.” ” 

Foremost among these was the danger of large public 
funds in the hands of those inexperienced in problems of 
relief. Even in the hands of the experienced the tremen- 
dous congestion of work meant a lowering of standards. 
Hardly less important was the lesson that each commu- 
nity should have in reserve enough persons trained in 
relief work to be called upon in an emergency. ‘Thou- 


*Frederic Almy, “The Problem of Charity,” Charities Review, Vol. 
IV, Dez; 
* Ibid., p. 170. 


264 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


sands who rushed in to relieve the suffering in 1893-94 
“had no time to stop and learn that charity is quite a 
different thing from alms.” ? As the Boston Society 
pointed out in reviewing its method of handling the situa- 
tion, it is a mistake for a society not to have a supply of 
trained investigators and experienced volunteer visitors 
ready to be called upon in an emergency. 

Another important lesson was the need of a definite 
effort to obtain the codperation of the newspapers in all 
relief plans.? Either because of ignorance of charity 
organization methods or because of lack of sympathy 
with them on the part of the daily press, the charity 
organization society in more than one community had to a 
degree failed to have the popular ear. Instead’ the col- 
umns of the newspapers were given up during a large 
part of the winter to long accounts of suffering and ex- 
aggerated reports of sore distress. These were coupled 
with frantic appeals for the establishment of new agencies 
of aid and relief; little consideration being given to the 
adequacy of existing societies. It was generally felt after 
the days of emergency were over that while most of the 
increase in applicants for aid was due to the unprece- 
dented hard times, “quite a considerable portion was 
ascribable to agitation.” # 

Another lesson learned was the mistake of launching in 
some communities enterprises semi-philanthropic in all but 
name, for the sale of groceries, coal, etc., at prices ruinous 
to petty dealers. They were not business enterprises, 
only a transparent simulation of business. One of their 


*Frederic Almy, “The Problem of Charity,” Charities Review, Vol. 
IV, -po'270+(1805). 

"The secretary of one of the most progressive societies in the south 
stated that it was his custom to show unfailing courtesy and attention 
to any young “cub” that came to get news items from the Associated 
Charities. He felt it an invaluable opportunity to educate the possible 
future newspaper editor in the methods of modern charity. He stated 
that this policy had already gained for him excellent codperation with 
a number of newspapers in the city. 

*Wm. P. Fowler, “Emergency Work in Boston,” Lend-a-Hand, Vol. 
XIII, p. 12 (1894). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 265 


pernicious effects was necessarily the driving out of busi- 
ness and into the ranks of the destitute of an unascertained 
number of small dealers, who could no longer sustain 
themselves against such rivalry. The very claim that 
these enterprises were not charitable, but business, gave 
the thrifty a saving pretext for using their restaurants 
and stores as bargain counters. ‘Doubtless the projectors 
of these schemes,” wrote Charles D. Kellogg, “were sin- 
cere in their purpose and generous in their sentiments”; 1 
but their methods were demonstrably erroneous. 

In short, the outstanding lesson of the trying days of 
1893-94 was the value of existing charity organization 
methods in times of unusual distress even when there was 
the need of more codperation and more sinews of war. As 
pointed out by a contemporary, ‘“‘wherever the work of re- 
lief was organized systematically, carefully and ade- 
quately, excellent results were attained; wherever it was 
done in a haphazard, indiscriminate manner” there was “‘a 
sad exhibition of funds wasted, imposture encouraged, 
deserving poverty neglected, and perhaps worst of all, the 
growth of permanent pauperism encouraged.’”” 

To one who has studied the close connection between 
the industrial depression of the seventies and the birth 
of the charity organization movement, that the industrial 
depression of the nineties should have witnessed an un- 
precedented growth of new societies and a revival in 
places where earlier gains had been lost, as in Wash- 
ington * and Chicago * is not surprising. 


* Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correction, 21st 
session, p. 29. (1894). 

* Editorial, The Monthly Register, Vol. XVI, p. 1 (1894). 

*Two years later (1895) the society underwent a thorough reorgani- 
zation at the hands of the “progressives’’ who outvoted the older group 
in control and succeeded in calling from another city a new secretary. 
The big problem before the reorganized society for the succeeding five 
years which were a period of relaying foundations, was that of con- 
trolling unwise relief in the city. The society adopted a non-relief basis 
and decided against amalgamation with the recently incorporated relief 
society of the city but urged hearty codperation. 

*See pp. 224 and 256. 


266 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


THE YEARS 1883-1895 IN RETROSPECT 


That charity organization societies aimed to be 
agencies for organizing charity rather than relief societies 
is written ali over the early history of the movement.’ 
The fear inherited from the founders, of granting relief 
from their own funds, lest it metamorphose the new 
societies into relief agencies still obtained. This does not 
mean that there were not, before the period was over, 
societies which administered relief directly from their own 
funds. In fact, by 1895 there were only a bare majority 
of societies which maintained the principle of procuring 
relief exclusively from others. However, this bare 
numerical majority was, ‘“‘a strong majority if greater 
weight be given to the leading societies and workers.” 
The attitude of the leaders of the movement was that 
where relief funds were held by charity organization 
societies, it was ‘‘a deplored necessity which must be 
reduced to a secondary incident of the work, or better 
still, entirely abolished.” ® 

In other words, the organizing and educational aspects 
of the work of charity organization societies were of 
paramount importance. ‘They asked money for the 
machinery of office, and protested that the ratio of their 
expenses to their relief disbursements was a false test of 
their work. They sent “hundreds of visitors and agents 
to the abodes of misery with empty purses, and pledged 
to withhold every penny of alms from their personal 
resources.” # 

Although there were many departures from the day’s 

*D. O. Kellogg, “The Function of Charity Organization,” Lend-a- 
Hand, Vol. I, p. 452 (1886). 

*Jeffrey R. Brackett, “The Charity Organization Movement,” Charities 
Review, Vol. IV, p. 394 (1895). 

* Charles D. Kellogg, Chairman, Committee on Charity Organization, 
Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correction, 14th Ses- 
sion, p. 123 (1887). 


*D. O. Kellogg, “The Function of Charity Organization,’ Lend-a- 
Hand, Vol. I, p. 452 (1886). 


_ 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 267 


work among many societies, they nevertheless truly and 
repeatedly proclaimed that “they would not usurp the 
chosen duties of other agencies, but desired to maintain 
their independence and to enhance their usefulness.” ! 


Tue TECHNIQUE OF THE EARLY DAys 


One can not but be filled with admiration for the 
little band of leaders in the various communities where 
charity organization took root, who endeavored to hold 
aloft the new standards while seeking ever to improve 
the quality of their work.2. While experience taught 
valuable lessons, there is no evidence of any real departure 
from the methods of case work first introduced by the 
pioneers.* Individualization of treatment was defined 
throughout the period, with remarkable insight. “If one 
of us,” wrote the secretary of the Brooklyn Bureau of 
Charities, ‘would do what can be done for our brother 
who is in distress, there is for us for the time but one 
class,—that which includes our brother, and there is in 
the universe but one representative of the class,—that is, 
himself.” # 

Likewise the concept of investigation, the first founda- 
tion stone of the new movement, was elucidated with 
remarkable insight. ‘Individualization,” says the same 
worker, “calls for special diagnosis, keenest differentia- 


*D. O. Kellogg, “The Function of Charity Organization,” Lend-a- 


Hand, Vol. I, p. 452 (1886). 

4*Mr. Alexander Johnson, who may justly be called the father of the 
Section Meetings of the National Conference of Social Work, stated to 
the author that in the early days the leaders of the movement were “so 
hungry to get something out of each other” that they would often hold 
meetings at 8 o’clock in the morning before the regular sessions. Some- 
times a busy executive, at considerable trouble, would take time to 
spend a week in another city for the purpose of studying the working 
of the local society at close range. 

* The contributions to good case work did not all come from those in 
the ranks of charity organization. For example, in Boston, Mr. Charles 
Birtwell, then of the Children’s Aid Society, was developing independ- 
ently and codperatively with the Associated Charities, better standards 
of case work than had previously obtained. 

*George B. Buzelle, “Individuality in the Work of Charity,” The 


Monthly Register, Vol. VIII, p. 16 (1886). 


268 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


tion of features, and most intense concentration of 
thought and effort,”! while another adds that if investi- 
gations are thorough, one must know not only that a per- 
son is in distress but “how they got into that condition.” 
One can not expect to do much for others unless one 
knows them and realizes that “they are men and women 
and have some of the same feelings and duties as the men 
and women’’® of other walks of life. It was pointed out 
repeatedly that a sound understanding of the situation 
should precede treatment. 

In spite of the ideals thus voiced by the leaders, and in 
spite of the practice of some of the best equipped societies, 
the investigations made by some of the charity organiza- 
tion societies at the time of which we write, as revealed 
on the old record cards, seem crude in the light of present- 
day practice.* The quality of work of the different 
societies then as since differed greatly. The name charity 
organization has never been preémpted. It is quite within 
truth to say that investigation of the kind which not only 
determines what help should be given, but also reveals 
from what sources such help should come, and how 
agencies may be brought into definite and hearty coopera- 
tion in carrying out the necessary treatment, is something 
whose full possibilities were not grasped by the majority 
of charity organization societies of the period under 
review. Probably “two-thirds of the errors in charity 
work,” wrote an active worker of the eighties, “‘are from 
misinformation or lack of information.” °® Occasionally 
one finds a charity organization society which either 


*George B. Buzelle, “Individuality in the Work of Charity,’ The 
Monthly Register, Vol. VIII, p. 16 (1886). 

* Alexander Johnson, “Familiar Letters on Charity Organization,” 
The Monthly Register, Vol. VII, p. 26 (1887). 

5 Josephine Shaw Lowell, Letter to Editor of The Monthly Register, 
Vol. VIII, p. 27 (1887). 

*Mary E. Richmond, “What is Charity Organization?” Charities 
Review, Vol. IX, p. 496 (1900). 

5 Zilpha D. Smith, “The Organization of Charity,” Proceedings, Na- 
tional Conference of Charities and Correction, 15th session, p. 127 


(1888). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 269 


acted as an investigator for other social agencies or 


offered its services as such, failing to realize that diagnosis 
and treatment go hand in hand, the latter in practice 
being a part of the former. More frequently one finds 
evidences of the work test being used as a substi- 
tute for investigation, a practice long since dis- 


credited. 


Although charity organization societies in the main 
shaped themselves to the existing social agencies of their 
respective communities, and “asked not for their for- 
bearance, but their codperation,” + ‘‘a thoroughly scien- 
tific cooperation’ of all charitable agencies, public and 
private, was still hardly more than a name. Efficient 
cooperation with relieving agencies was usually most 
difficult. In some cities it dwindled to almost nothing, 
although in others a fair measure of codperation obtained 
as in Boston or even public outdoor relief officials co- 
operated fully, as in Buffalo. Even when cooperation 
was more than nominal, ‘“‘too often,” wrote one of the 
leaders of the movement, “we lose sight of this, our 
cardinal principle, and feel in actual field work strongly 
tempted to deal with individual cases upon our own re- 
sponsibility.” * The various social agencies were not 
“touching elbows” then as now.® 

It is not, therefore, surprising that when charity or- 
ganization societies asked all interested in the relief of 
the needy to send to their Registration Bureaus a history 
of the families that they were helping with the respective 


*D. O. Kellogg, “The Functions of Charity Organization,” Lend-a- 
Hand, Vol. I, p. 452 (1886). 

*Robert Treat Paine, Jr., Discussion, Proceedings, National Confer- 
ence of Charities and Correction, 8th session, p. 119 (1881). 

* Amos G. Warner, “American Charities,’ p. 446 (1894). 

* Alexander Johnson, “Co6dperation in the Work of Charity,” The 
Charities Review, Vol. II, p. 21 (1892). 

°* From a personal interview with Mr. George S. Wilson, one time Gen- 
eral Secretary of the Associated Charities of Washington, D. C. 

See also John M. Glenn, “The Need of Organization in Charity 
Work,” Charities, Vol. III, p. 5 (1809). 


270 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


amounts of relief given, their requests often fell on deaf 
or unsympathetic ears. Many agencies either failing to 
see the value in such a clearing-house of information ! or 
taking the stand that the information contained in their 
records was confidential, refused to register their cases. 
In the great city of Chicago the local Bureau of Charities 
as late as 1900 was still unearthing the stupid condition 
of ‘“‘a half dozen agencies helping one family.” ” 

The failure in getting anything like a general use of 
the principle of the registration of cases inevitably 
rendered difficult if not impossible the best type of 
case work. The registration bureau, though only a tool, 
was nevertheless the sine qua non of the best work. 

In reviewing the quality of work of charity organiza- 
tion societies previous to 1896, it must also be borne in 
mind that family social workers then did not have as 
many social resources ready at hand as now. The social 
equipment in 1890 of a city the size of Baltimore is 
illustrative. ‘There was no Instructive Visting Nurse 
Association; no Babies’ Milk Fund Society; no Asso- 
ciation for the Prevention and Relief of Tuberculosis; 
no state or private war of any sort on tuberculosis; no 
hospital social service work; no Playground Association, 
or Public Athletic League, or Boy Scouts. Fresh-air 
work was in its infancy. There was no Juvenile Court; 
no Social Hygiene Committee, or . . . Mental Hygiene 
Committee.” * It must be said to their credit, however, 
that the leaders constantly emphasized “promptness and 
adequacy” in treatment. Workers were admonished to 
help “‘in such a way that the condition shall not return as 


*“This clearing-house function of the Charity Organization Society is 
the first and perhaps most fundamental one, and the one most clearly 
stated in the name which the societies adopted.” Amos G. Warner, 
‘“‘American Charities,” p. 382 (1894). 

*See Report of Chicago Bureau of Charities, p. 4, issued jointly for 
1899-1900 and 1900-IgQ0TI. 

*Kate M. McLane, “Baltimore 1890-1915, A Retrospect and a Com- 
parison,” The Survey, Vol. XXXIV, p. 88 (1915). we 


~~ 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 271 


soon as the aid bestowed” is ‘“‘consumed.”! The ideal 
held high was that of seeing a case through, of seeing 
that difficulties should not only be remedied but stay 
remedied. 

In much of their work the real problem was viewed 


_ “Sn the broad sense, as spiritual not physical, and solvable 


only through spiritual agencies.” It was held that there 
was enough money already available if only systematically 
managed, for the material relief required. What was 
needed and hard to get for the “‘destitute and ignorant” 
were “personal kindnesses, even the alms of understand- 
ing, prudence, discretion, counsel, friendship.’ 

The disapproval of material relief in the form of doles 
and alms-giving explains in large measure the continued 
hostility of the charity organization forces in several 
places to public outdoor relief. It was held, in the words 
of Josephine Shaw Lowell, “the larger the funds given in 
relief in any community, the more pressing is the demand 
for them.” ° The Buffalo Society, for example, conducted 
a successful campaign to reduce the amount of the public 
outdoor relief of the city, while the Organized Charity 
Association of New Haven in a vigorous way called the 
attention of its town officials to the waste of money then 
permitted in outdoor relief. “Of the 1,188 persons regu- 
larly aided, an investigation showed that only 380 were 
proper recipients of relief.” ° 

Although friendly visiting was viewed during the years 
here reviewed as one of the “spiritual agencies” of family 
case work, whose value was unquestioned, it was never- 

* Alexander Johnson, “Familiar Letters on Charity Organization,’ The 
Monthly Register, Vol. VII, p. 26 (1887) 

*George B. Buzelle, “Charity Organization in Cities,’ The Charities 
Review, Vol. II, p. 8 (1892). 

* Charles D. Kellogg, “Charity Organization as an Educative Force,” 
The Charities Review, Vol. II, p. 19 (1892). 

*Tbid., p. 109. 

*°See C. K. Meredith, “Charity Organization and the Church,” The 


Monthly Register, Vol. VII, p. 38 (1886). 
° Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 150 (1900). 


272 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


theless admitted to be the “weak point of the charity 
organization society” 1 in most places.2, The Buffalo 
Society, the oldest large society in the country, had but 
few friendly visitors before launching its church district 
plan. By 1895, in one city with a population of nearly 
300,000, a society thirteen years old had none, while 
in another city with a population of over 200,000 a so- 
ciety eleven years old had given up this form of volunteer 
work after five years’ trial. The New York Society, 
located in the largest city in the land had but few visi- 
tors. Moreover, the majority of visitors throughout 
the country seemed to feel that their only duty was “to 
see their families through some immediate need.” ° 

In marked contrast was the relative success of friendly 
visiting in both Boston and Baltimore. Historically, the 
Boston Society grew out of friendly visiting. From its 
beginning it had made conscious efforts to build up a 
large corps of friendly visitors. By the close of the 
eighties it could claim approximately a thousand visitors 
in service. By 1892 a definite plan for the education of 
friendly visitors and for maintaining their interest in the 
work of the Society had been worked out.’ The Balti- 
more Society was greatly influenced by the success of 
the Boston Society. As a result, after repeated trials and 
failures at friendly visiting, it could claim by 1895 an 
unpadded list of over four hundred visitors. 

*John M. Glenn, “Problems of Charity Organization Workers,” Chari- 
ties Review, Vol. VIII, p. 514 (1899). 

*See the Sixteenth Annual Report of the Associated Charities of 


Washington, D. C., p. 26 (1897); also “News of Local Charities,” 
Charities, Vol. I, p. 8 (1897). 

* Jeffrey R. Brackett, “The Charity Organization Movement,” Chari- 
ties Review, Vol. IV, p. 395 (1895). 

*Mrs. E. C. Bolles, “Would Personal Influence Diminish Pauperism ?” 
The Charities Review, Vol. II, p. 416 (1892). 

* Jeffrey R. Brackett, “The Charity Organization Movement,” Charities 
Review, Vol. IV, p. 395 (1895). ; 

*See p. 178. 

“Copies of a paper describing this work were sent at the time to all 
the Charity Organization Societies in the country. Zilpha D. Smith, 
“The Education of the Friendly Visitor,” Charities Review, Vol. II, 


Pp. 51 (1892). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 273 


Failure to work out definite plans for training friendly 
visitors and maintaining their interest explains in large 
measure the relatively poor success most societies had in 
this part of their work. However, there were extenuat- 
ing circumstances in some instances. ‘The relative size 
of the territory covered by a society was a factor for or 
against success. In some cities, as Chicago, which covers 
so vast a territory, the mere problem of transportation 
from one part of the city to another constituted a serious 
obstacle. This was sometimes further complicated by 
_the development of so-called “slum”’ districts, separating 
the rich and poor by great distances, as in New York 
and Chicago. Such a separation proved a barrier, though 
not insurmountable, to the development of true neighbor- 
-liness. As great a barrier was also found in frequent dif- 
ferences of race, especially if accompanied by those of 
religion and language. 

It should not be inferred from anything just stated that 
the methods of charity organization did not gain an 
increasing number of advocates and followers wherever 
tried during the period just surveyed. When whole- 
heartedly applied in the trying days of 1893-94, charity 
organization methods stood the test. Nevertheless, as 
contrasted with the last fifteen years, there was a rela- 
tive lack of advance in the refinement of the technique 
of family case work and a frequently wide divergence be- 
tween principle and practice. 

This seems to have been due in part to the many extra 
activities which a number of societies with the best of 
‘motives added on to their immediate task of doing the best 
piece of case work possible for their clients. Often these 
obligations were assumed because no one else seemed 
available to render the service. Nevertheless, ‘“‘while much 
was accomplished in various places, there seems to be 
little doubt,” writes a contemporary observer, “that in 
some instances these measures proved to be profitless 
experiments. At any rate, they were abandoned. In 


274 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


other instances they metamorphosed the society and 
withdrew it from the charity organization ranks.”? 
Although not having such unfortunate results, the general 
secretary of the Buffalo Society found that the direction 
of these extra activities required perhaps the larger part 
of his time. There seems to be evidence that this was to 
the detriment of the quality of its family case work. 

There were extenuating circumstances’ to explain 
the relatively slow gain in the general acceptance of 
charity organization methods. It required strong per- 
suasion and weighty argument to get the larger com- 
munities, not to mention the smaller, to see that organiza- 
tion applies to charity as to business, if it is to be effi- 
cient. Charity organization came as a reform and 
reforms are never popular at first. People do not change 
suddenly their whole theory with regard to poverty and 
its relief. Only where there are common convictions can 
there be any vital codperation, and for a long time the 
charity organizationists of the earlier days had to spend 
their zeal and strength in the task of converting the 
unbeliever. 

The period under review antedates the day of training 
schools of social work and special research departments 
for the study of the technique of social case work. 
Workers were so few that, short-sighted as it may have 
been, these other things had to wait. As a result the 
movement lacked an adequate number of trained work- 
ers. As the leaders had no others to turn to many re- 
cruits in the ranks were perfectly green. 

Although the movement had everywhere an _ uphill 
fight, its greatest struggles were in the smaller towns, 
where it more frequently proved difficult to discover suit- 
able men for the secretaryship of the local society. This 
problem was all the more serious, as charity organization 
was still on trial in the smaller communities and had 


*D. O. Kellogg, “The Function of Charity Organization,” Lend-a- 
Hand, Vol. I, p. 453 (1886). . 


ie 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 275 


therefore to produce more tangible results and meet more 


‘objections than in those larger cities where its need and 
value were more easily seen.! 


To attempt to voice the social philosophy of a genera- 
tion that is gone is a perilous task. Although various 
societies had exercised from the beginning a definite influ- 


ence on legislation affecting the welfare of their respective 


‘communities and here and there had fostered preventive 
efforts, their work as contrasted with what is known 
‘to-day in the language of current social work, as ‘“‘pre- 


9 . 


ventive and social” * was, in the main, remedial and indi- 
vidual. There is ample evidence, however, that it was 
‘cure and not mere alleviation that they sought. In doing 


so, the supreme object continued to be that of the 


founders in England and America, namely, the conserva- 


tion of character, or when lost, its reclamation. ‘The 
greatest wrong” that can be done to a poor man, writes 
Mrs. Lowell, is ‘‘to undermine” his “‘character,” “‘for it is 
his all. The struggle is hard: he needs all his determina- 


tion and strength of will to fight his way, and nothing 


that deprives him of these qualities can be ‘charitable.’ ” 3 

Individual work, by individuals with individuals, was 
held to be the only effective way of helping. The prob- 
lem in the final analysis is always “‘an individual, personal 
problem.” Its solution, writes another worker, “rests with 
myself and my neighbor,” * for “‘it is only individuals who 
can influence individuals.” ° 


*Anna L. Dawes, “The Need of Training Schools for a New Pro- 
fession,” Lend-a-Hand, Vol. XI, p. 91 (1893). 

Even so late as 1905, Alexander Johnson, writing on Organization 
in the Smaller Cities, said, “Organized charity has hitherto been most 
successful in the great cities.” Charities, Vol. XIV, p. 711 (1905). 

"Robert W. deForest, “The Broadening Sphere of Organized Char- 
ity,’ Published by the Field Department of the Charities Publication 
Committee. 

®See C. K. Meredith, “Charity Organization and the Church,” The 
Monthly Register, Vol. VII, p. 38 (1886). 

*George B. Buzelle, “Charity Organization, Proceedings, National 
Conference of Charities and Correction, p. 211 (1892). 

® Robert W. deForest, “The Broadening Sphere of Organized Charity,” 
published by the Field Department of the Charities Publication Com- 
mittee, p. 3. 


276 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


In short, the main emphasis of the movement during 
its youth was laid upon helping the individual direct. In 
doing so there was a revulsion against indiscriminate alms- 
giving, the emphasis being laid on aid through personal 
service, an insistence upon ascertainment of fact before 
action, and upon action being directed toward a per- 
manent change in the condition of the individual or 
family. ‘Permanent self-dependence of the individual 
or family, or if age or disability made self-dependence 
impossible, then permanent support somewhere and from 
some source, were the ends which it sought to attain. 
And in attaining these ends it used the friendly visitor 
in preference to any mere dole giver, and sought to com- 
bine and coordinate resources of the community.” ? 

That cure by the case-by-case method rather than 
“mass” movements for prevention characterized these 
early days seems to have been due to several causes. 
Often the various societies were not far enough along in 
their search for causes to be sure enough to launch a 
movement whose end was prevention. Again the com- 
munity as a whole was not ripe for it. By the method 
of case work, charity organization societies had first 
to develop a community ready to support preventive 
movements. The tasks before the various societies were 
so pressing and the laborers, relatively speaking’ so few, 
that the relief of distress, being more immediate, took 
precedence over measures exclusively preventive. Also 
there was lacking medical and social knowledge on the 
basis of which alone some of the reforms since attempted 
could have been started. 

That it was realized by some that ‘poverty and crime 
are both the results of social conditions, often deeply 
rooted in the soil left by the decay and corruption of 
other generations; conditions which in themselves need 
reform,” ” is amply illustrated by a number of annual 


* Robert W. deForest, “The Broadening Sphere of Organized Charity,” 
published by the Field Department of the Charities Publication Com- 
mittee, p. 3. * Editor, Lend-a-Hand, Vol. I, p. 702 (1886). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 277 


reports of charity organization societies, issued the latter 
half of the period just surveyed, and by the following 
paragraphs from an address which is quoted at some 
length, as it was given wide publicity in charity organiza- 
tion circles at the time: ! ) 


_ “Where the Old Charity gave a shilling and lost sight 

of them [the poor], the New follows them, and sees 
where they sleep and eat, are born and die. It tries by 
every effort and resource at its command to reconstruct 
their surroundings. It appeals at once to the self-respect 
of the tenant and to the humanity of the owner; it in- 
vokes the aid of the law; it shows the capitalist that a 
Sage investment may consist with the bestowing of the 
greatest blessings on the poor. 

“‘Pursuing its quest for the causes of poverty outside of 
the poor, it finds itself confronted with the relations of 
employer and employed. At the head of its alphabet, 
come the letters which spell the word JUSTICE. And 
by justice it does not mean merely paying the wages 
which the employed have agreed to receive. While it says 
to the one class, ‘If any man will not work, neither shall 
he eat,’ to the other class it says in language no less ex- 
plicit, ‘Employers, give unto your employed that which is 
just and equal.’ This giving of what is just and equal 
would do away very largely with the need of what we 
call charity. It is not the ideal of the New Charity that 
the employer should cut the laborer down below a living 
wage, and then give him a turkey at Christmas. 

“While it says to all men, ‘In the sweat of thy face 
thou shalt eat thy bread,’ it also says to all men, ‘As 
every man has received a gift, whether it be of genius, of 
wealth, of social position, of influence, even so minister 
the same one to another, all your fellows in humanity, 
as faithful trustees of the manifold gift. of God.’ 

“The New Charity goes to great employers, to the 
Presidents of gigantic Railroad Corporations, and it says: 


*Rev. H. L. Wayland, “The Old Charity and the New,” an address 
delivered at the annual meeting of the New York Charity Organization 
Society in February, 1886. It was afterward reprinted in The Monthly 
Register, Vol. VII, No. 4, p. 30, and also in The Reporter. The Rev. 
Wayland was the founder of the New Haven Society. 


278 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


‘While we realize your personal kindness of heart, while 
we value your private almsgiving, yet we feel that the 
greatest work that you can do for your tens of thousands 
of employed lies in giving them an equity that is accord- 
ing to the Law of Sinai and the Mountain Sermon, by 
extending to them moral reinforcement, by encouraging 
and helping them to save, to become‘in a small way cap- 
italists, partners in your enterprise, sharers in your suc- 
Chess 


In much the same vein, the president of the Boston 
Associated Charities asked, jthas' not the new charity 
organization movement too long been content to ‘aim 
at a system to relieve or even uplift judiciously single 
cases without asking if there are not prolific causes per- 
manently at work to create want, vice, crime, disease and 
death; and whether th@se, causes may not te wholly, Or- 
in a large degree eradicated? If such causes of pauperism 
exist, how vain to waste our energies on single cases of 
relief, when society should rather aim at removing the 
prolific sources of all the woe.”! After stating his belief 
that the problem of poor relief in great cities should be 
“restated in ampler terms,’ he adds, in no uncertain 
words, ‘‘The diseases of society are more aggravated, the 
dangers are graver, the need of radical remedies is more 
absolute than the new charity has yet fully and fairly 
faced.”* In harmony with this point of view he declares 
elsewhere that there were 8,o00 souls living in Boston 
‘in homes that should be destroyed as unfit for human 
habitation.’”? 

In the closing years of the period, the chairman of the 
Charity Organization Committee of the National Con- 


*Robert Treat Paine, Jr., “Pauperism in Great Cities: Its Four Chief 
Causes,” Proceedings, International Congress of Charities, Correction 
and Philanthropy, Vol. I, p. 35 (1893). 

* Ibid., p. 23. 

® Robert Treat Paine, Jr., “Emergency Loans,” Lend-a-Hand, Vol. XI, 
P. 426 (1893). 


EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT 279 


ference of Charities and Correction, after stating his 
belief that it was the duty of charity organizationists to 
educate public opinion to ideas of true benevolence and 
that each individual helped up and on, was a means to 
this end, expressed his belief that the critics of charity 
organization societies were often just in saying that 
while such societies were busy over little things, they 
often omitted matters of great weight, and that ‘charity 
organization societies must work harder to do away 
with the causes of poverty and pauperism or they will 
be weighed in the balance and found wanting.” ! ‘Are 
we moving a few individuals to healthy homes,” he 
asked, ‘‘and yet leaving without protest perhaps, the 
unfit houses for others to occupy? ...I do not 
believe that we are doing all we can, by our influence 
as societies and as individuals, to abolish all conditions 
which depress, and to promote measures which raise men 
and neighborhoods and communities. . . .’” 

Thus as we have seen the experiment in charity 
organization, ushered in less than two decades earlier in 
a modest and tentative spirit, had been tried, and tried 
with heavy odds against it, especially in the difficult years 
of 1893-94. While far from perfect, it had been found 
to answer its purpose. The methods of charity organiza- 
tion had been equal to the strain of actual service. The 
means, facilities and expedients devised generally and 
adopted were those which subsequent use has shown to 
be helpful to the worker. The general methods accepted, 
although destined to be enriched greatly by subsequent 
experience and scientific research, had proven sound and 
to contain vital ideas. To say this does not imply that 
at this time nor at any time since, have family social 
workers felt that the last word has been said about the 

*Jeffrey R. Brackett, “The Charity Organization Movement: Its 
Tendency and Its Duty,” Proceedings, National Conference of Charities 


and Correction, 22nd session, p. 86 (1895). 
* Tbid., p. 84. 


280 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


methods of efficient social case work. ‘These methods 
when honestly applied by those of an inquiring mind 
also naturally led on to the many preventive measures 
which, as we shall presently see, characterize the next 
period of development. 


Shar LER VITT 


THE ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR THE 
PREVENTION OF POVERTY 


[1896-1904 | 


THE number of societies in the country using charity 
organization methods at the close of the period here 
reviewed was approximately one hundred and fifty,! as 
contrasted with approximately one hundred for the close 
of the period preceding. Although societies existed in all 
sections of the country, the vast majority were still to be 
found east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason 
and Dixon line. Most of them were also still located in 
the relatively larger centers of population. Charity or- 
ganization societies were to be found in over fifty of the 
sixty odd cities in the country having 60,000 population 
or over. The smaller towns and semi-rural districts were 
in the main untouched by the movement. Thus no less 
than thirty-six towns in Ohio, most of which had popula- 
tions of less than 10,000, and but three over 20,000, had 
no organization for the care of the poor except the public 
relief system.2 This’ however, is not so surprising when 
“the very general absence of any serious need of relief 
in any form except that of relatives and friends” was 
believed to characterize the situation in such commu- 
nities.® 

*This includes some relief societies which had transformed their 
methods to harmonize with charity organization principles. 

*Anon., “Organized Charities in Small Cities,’ Charities Review, 
Vol. X, p. 394 (1900). 


*See Edward T. Devine, “Relief and Care of the Poor in Their 
Homes,” Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 120 (1900). 


281 


282 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


The standards of work of the different societies as 
might be expected varied greatly. Charity organization 
is not automatic. Its success means earnest, intelligent, 
discriminate work, persistently carried on; it means that 
the community which wishes to succeed in helping people 
out of their poverty must put brains, capacity and money 
into the work. 

Some of the existing organizations were charity organ- 
ization societies in name only. Among others there often 
existed ‘‘an incompatibility of method.”! Conditions in 
Ohio as revealed by a current investigation are apparently 
typical and illustrative. In but five cities of the state 
was the local work organized on modern lines and the 
respective societies not improperly called charity organi- 
zation societies. Societies in seven other communities 
bearing the name were simply relief societies, credited 
with doing ‘‘a good many other things that nobody ought 
to do.’”? 

The situation in some of the larger cities with charity 
organization societies of long standing was far from 
healthy. It was but five years earlier that the Associated 
Charities of Washington, D. C., had faced a crisis from 
which it was able to emerge with any degree of vitality 
only because of radical reorganization * and a change of 
policy. The Associated Charities of Minneapolis, 
launched in 1884, found itself struggling in 1898 “‘to keep 
things going and meet anywhere near decently the de- 
mands for help made upon the organization.” * Its annual 


* Frank Tucker, ‘The Report of the Committee on the Care and Relief 
of Needy Families in their Homes,” Charities, Vol. VII (1901). 

* Anon., “Organized Charities in Small Cities,’ Charities Review, Vol. — 
X, p. 394 (1900). 

* Even to-day not a little of the work of the American Association 
for Organizing Family Social Work is devoted to reorganizing or 
strengthening societies. 

*“A Quarter Century of Work Among the Poor,” 1884-1900, including 
the Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Associated Charities of Min- 


neapolis, p. 23 (1909). 


ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 283 


/ Income had decreased over 100% since 1894. The society 
in Omaha was entirely inactive between 1900 and 1902. 
Most of the developments which to-day characterize 
societies in both Cleveland and Chicago saw their rise 
since 1900. Other instances might be cited to show that 
there was “little or no consistency in the practices of the 
various large charity organization societies and associated 
charities of the country,” + and that in some places, as 
in Philadelphia, the movement had lost a grip on the 
situation. By 1go1 the relations among the charities of 
Philadelphia amounted to an “armed neutrality,” and 
there was a possibility that the local charity organiza- 
tion society would disband instead of attempting reorgan- 
ization, which latter course was finally decided upon. 
There were about twenty-four hundred separate agencies 
in the city. To complicate the situation further, eleven 
soup houses, some of them dating back for a century, 
were feeding annually approximately 80,000 persons and 
spending $25,000.27, The city was, moreover, competing 
with Chicago as to which sheltered the larger number 
of vagrants. Forty thousand lodgings were supplied in 
the police stations of Philadelphia in 1900. No one was 
refused shelter who requested it. If the lodger became 
habitual, the magistrate was asked to commit him to the 
House of Correction. During the severe weather some of 
the stations were so crowded that the cell rooms were 
used to accommodate the overflow. 

The lamentable position in the community of the Phil- 
adelphia Society appears to have been in the main the 
logical outcome of a blind adherence to the so-called 
“Philadelphia Plan”? of organizing charity, after that 

*Frank Tucker, “What a Charity Worker Is Expected to Do,” Chari- 
ties, Vol. VII, p. 35 (1901). 

? A house-to-house canvass of the district of one of these soup houses 
made at the time revealed the fact that the soup-dispensing system was 
a “wanton waste of well-intended but mistaken philanthropy.” See 


Anon., Charities, Vol. IV, No. 20, p. 10 (1900). 
*See p. 100. 


284 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


plan no longer suited the condition of the city. Under 
the earlier conditions a system of district committees had 
not the dangers and weaknesses ! of such a system twenty 
years later, when, with the advent of rapid transit and 
the influx of immigrants, slums and ghettos developed 
on one hand, and exclusive residential districts on the 
other. Although this decentralized system of local com- 
mittees had been abandoned in other American cities, it 
was still adhered to in Philadelphia up to the time under 
review.2. The Central Board had effective control of 
but three wards out of the city’s forty-two. While the 
system of independent districts had been very successful 
in some parts of the city, wards containing more than 
nine-tenths of the population of the city needed reorgani- 
zation to bring their work up to standard. The need of a 
strong central body having the confidence of the com- 
munity and prepared to set a standard of work below 
which no district should be permitted to drop was 
apparent. The Central Board faced a difficult problem, 
as only those wards were willing to reorganize which had 
empty treasuries. In spite of the difficulties, as we shall 
see, this was practically accomplished by 1906, the year 
when, by the persistent and hearty codperation of the 
leaders of some of Philadelphia’s social agencies, the 
National Conference of Charities and Correction was 
brought to that city. 

The lack of cooperation among local social agencies 


*“There is no gainsaying the fact that even the strongest and best 
district organizations suffer and fall short of rendering their full public 
service if there is not also an energetic and efficient central organization 
standing conspicuously for the principles of adequate relief, codperation 
among workers, personal service on behalf of those who are in need, 
and determined, unremitting warfare against the social conditions which 
create pauperism.” Anon., Charities, Vol. V, No. 25, p. 8 (1900). 

*It was not until r90o that the Chicago Bureau of Charities cen- 
tralized its financial system. Instead of having a treasurer in each of 
its eleven districts and a separate collection of the funds necessary for 
its support from the residents of the district, financial matters were 
entrusted to a central committee of fifteen and a central treasurer. 
Anon., Charities, Vol. V, No. 27, pp. 15, 16 (1900). 

*At this writing (1921) there is but one district committee outside 
the control and supervision of the Central Board. 


ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 285 


was unfortunately not limited to Philadelphia.t This 
often led to the launching in.many communities of mush- 
room social agencies resulting in a loss of money, time and 
good temper. The death of fifty-five per cent of all the 
charities established in Baltimore during the first four 
years of the period under review is illustrative. As late as 
the opening of the present century, registration bureaus 
or social service exchanges, as now more generally called, 
had been given a fair trial in but two or three cities.” 

Although the Boston Society’s experience of twenty 
years with friendly visiting had proven it more than 
an experiment, the societies with anything like adequate 
corps of friendly visitors were the striking exceptions. 
There were apparently no societies in the country with 
district offices except some on the Atlantic coast and 
Buffalo and Chicago. One of the reasons for the lack 
of standardization just noted was no doubt, as Mrs. 
Bosanquet pointed out at the time, the scarcity of 
trained workers. The idea that training is ‘‘a necessary 
preliminary to charitable work” was essentially new.* 
A further reason was the meagreness of literature on 
the technique of social case work. Everybody had been 
doing relief work, but no one was ‘able apparently to 
formulate any very helpful suggestions as to how it should 
be done.” 4 

Although a number of communities had a long way to 
travel before the methods of charity organization were 
generally and consistently followed, it would create too 
dark a picture to omit any reference to the substantial 
progress that those principles and methods had made. 
For example, when in many cities and towns in the 
blizzard of 1899 “‘a spirit of blind abandon shoveled out 


*Samuel H. Bishop, “A New Movement in Charity,” Charities, Vol. 
VII, p. 446 (1901). 

*Mary E. Richmond, “What is Charity Organization?” Charities Re- 
view, Vol. IX. p. 497 (1900). 

* Helen Bosanquet, “Methods of Training,” Charities Review, Vol. X, 
P. 389 (1900). 

“Mary E. Richmond, “What is Charity Organization?” Charities Re- 
view, IX, p. 493 (1900). 


286 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


relief by the wagon load,’ not a few cities, notably the 
larger ones, turned to the established charitable agencies 
and entrusted to them the work of relief. Newspapers 
which a decade earlier would have loaded wagons with 
supplies and dispensed them on street corners, joined in 
supporting the work of established organizations. The 
Mayor of Chicago did issue a public appeal for relief for 
alleged great destitution, stating that funds sent him 
would be distributed through the police. The appeal, 
however, met with little public response and much 
criticism on the part of the officials of the city’s outdoor 
relief and of several prominent social agencies. In Balti- 
more the A. I. C. P. and C. O. S. took a leading part in 
meeting the emergency, although but a few years earlier 
‘it would have been considered in Baltimore a strange 
thing to give emergency relief money to charity societies 
instead of to the police.”? In New York City a special 
committee inaugurated by the C. O. S. undertook to give 
relief by employing men at $1.00 a day to help the city 
department clear the streets of the East Side of snow, 
which for several days completely blocked the work of 
removing garbage. Although in many cases charity 
organization societies were led to methods of relief which 
were doubtless against their best judgment, nevertheless 
the societies seem in general to have met the situation 
adequately or at least in a fashion that showed they had 
gained in confidence and ability since the trying days of 
93. In short, during the period under review, the so- 
called principles of charity organization were increasingly 
adhered to and even avowed critics of the movement 
seem to have paid charity organizationists a tribute for 
their relative thoroughness of methods.* 


*Anon., “Poverty in the Storm,” Charities Review, Vol. IX, pp. 3-4 
(1899). . 

_Lbid., pp. 1-2. 

* Ibid., pp. 3-4. 

*It was pointed out at the National Conference of Charities and 
Correction in 1899 that charity organization societies had been able 
to formulate “such a statement of their fundamental principles and to 


. ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 287 


THE EARLY INTEREST IN HOUSING CONDITIONS 


No one can work with people in want without perceiv- 
ing that bad housing is one of the direct causes of poverty. 
As early as 1797, as was noted in an earlier chapter,’ a 
special supervisor was appointed under the Hamburg plan 
to secure as far as possible improved dwellings ‘‘for the 
poor.” The work of Miss Octavia Hill in London in 
behalf of better housing for the poor and the interest 
of men of the time like Edward Denison is too well 
known to need further mention here. In America the 
importance of sanitary housing was early borne in upon 
the pioneers. Of charity organization societies the 
Buffalo Society was among the first to stress the impor- 
tance of housing. As early as 1883 it had pointed out 
“that a permanent improvement in the condition of the 
poor can only be accomplished by a betterment of their 
surroundings.” * In 1891 this society had secured an 
ordinance from the city regulating tenement houses which 
marked a step forward. In the fall of 1892, anticipating 
cholera in Buffalo, its agents had been detailed by the 
city Board of Health to inspect tenement houses. As 
an outcome of this inspection the city took steps govern- 
ing the erection and care of tenement and lodging houses, 
passing ordinances on the subject, drafted by the So- 
ciety’s Committee on Sanitary Condition of the Homes 
of the Poor, in codperation with the Board of Health 
and Superintendent of Buildings. The enforcement of 
these and subsequent ordinances has remained an ever- 
present problem of the society. Mention has already 


give such reasons for the division of work between others and them- 
selves as to disarm prejudice and to make the principles and explana- 
tions appear rational, charitable, sympathetic and Christian.’ See Pro- 
ceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correction, 26th session, 
Pp. 275 (1899). See also Homer Folks, “The Care of Needy Families in 
Their Homes,” Charities, Vol. VII, p. 414 (1901). 

*See p. 26. 

* Proceedings, Fifth Annual Meeting, C. O. S. of Buffalo, p. 31 (1883). 


288 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


been made of the work in the field of housing reform of 
Alfred T. White of the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities. 
Under his inspiration a model tenement, the first of its 
kind, was erected in Brooklyn. It gave impulse to a 
great popular wave of interest in the reduction of the 
evils of tenement house life which in turn led to the pas- 
sage in 1879 of a tenement house law in New York. 
Though imperfect, it marked advance over the law of 
1867, the first in the country to attempt to regulate tene- 
ments. Reference should also be made to the fact that in 
the late eighties one of the district conferences of the Bos- 
ton Associated Charities had made under the direction of 
Professor Dwight Porter, of the Massachusetts Institute 
of Technology, and with the codperation of the Board of 
Health, ‘‘one of the best and most fruitful investigations” 
of certain tenement-house districts of Boston that had 
ever been made.’ It resulted in important changes in the 
existing law on the subject. 

By the opening of the period of history covered by this 
chapter definite improvements in tenement and sanitary 
conditions had been brought about in no less than ten 
cities, largely through the efforts of the local charity 
organization society. 


A New Epocu IN HousInc REFORM 


Housing reform on a large scale seems to progress in 
waves or in rhythms. It is not possible to maintain a 
public agitation over one social ill, no matter how bad, 
without interruption. ‘The tension necessary for social 
action must occasionally be relaxed. The time seemed 
ripe about the beginning of the new century for a housing 
movement of unprecedented proportions. We are here, 
however, concerned only with the contribution which the 
charity organization movement had to make. Early in 
the period under review, Mr. Lawrence Veiller, at one 


*Anon., Charities, Vol. VII, p. 52 (1901). 


ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 289 


time a resident in a settlement in New York City, believ- 
ing that the most serious question affecting the welfare of 
the working people of that city was the matter of housing, 
sought to form an Improved Housing Association to inves- 
tigate conditions and to carry through necessary reforms 
in that field.1_ The then general secretary of the Charity 
Organization Society of New York City dissuaded him 
from organizing a separate association. Instead, the New 
York Society instituted a special committee on tenement 
house reform, with Mr. Veiller as secretary, “to consider 
the revision of the building laws so far as such revision 
affect the laws relating to tenement and lodging houses.” ” 
Having failed in an attempt to secure suitable legislation 
from the local legislative body, the committee prepared 
an extensive exhibition showing in picturesque and graphic 
form the existing tenement house conditions. The educa- 
tional effect of the exhibition was not limited to New 
York City, but extended throughout the State and even 
beyond. Largely through the efforts of the Society’s 
Committee on Tenement House Reform, the Governor of 
the State subsequently appointed a commission on which 
were two members from the central council of the Charity 
Organization Society,* to investigate the tenement house 
problem in cities of the first class. All of the recom- 
mendations of the commission were embodied in the laws. 
These measures prescribed the conditions under which 
tenement houses could be built in the future, the altera- 
tions required in existing buildings to make them habit- 
able and decent, and the character of official inspections 
of old and new houses. The new laws did away with the 

*The field in New York City had been plowed by the work of the 
Tenement House Committee of 1894, of which Richard Watson Gilder 
was chairman. 

? Robert Hunter, “Relation between Social Settlements and Charity 
Organization,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. X1, pp. 86, 87 (1902). 

*Mr. Robert W. de Forest, president of the society, became Chairman 


of the Commission. Mr. Lawrence Veiller served as secretary of the 
Commission. 


290 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


dark, narrow and unventilated airshaft, which had been 
the especial abomination of the ordinary New York tene- 
ment house,' and secured many minor but essential re- 
forms. They also provided for the creation of a new 
department responsible for the enforcement of the tene- 
ment-house laws in New York City. 

The social consequences of such a piece of legislation 
are more readily appreciated when it is recalled that at 
the time of the organization of this new department more 
than two-thirds of the entire population of New York 
City were living in approximately 83,000 tenement 
houses. 

The Committee on Tenement House Reform, which 
had initiated this reform movement, and had given way 
temporarily to the State Commission, was then reorgan- 
ized as a permanent committee of the society. By 1913, 
as one result of tenement house laws secured largely 
through the activities of the Committee, windows had 
been cut into 200,000 dark rooms; running water was 
to be found on each floor of every tenement house; 
over a million and a half people were living in homes 
with outside light and air in every room, a sink, run- 
ning water, and a private water-closet in every apart- 
ment; and two-thirds of these with their own private bath. 
In 1914, in cooperation with the Tenement House De- 
partment of the city of New York, it inaugurated a cam- 
paign to educate tenement house dwellers in making their 
homes more comfortable and sanitary. Under the 
approval of the Mayor an educational pamphlet was 
issued jointly by the Tenement House Department and 
the Tenement House Committee of the C. O. S., to be 
distributed to every family of tenement dwellers in the 
city, to be followed by a visit from a woman inspector 
of the Tenement House Department to the mother of 


*See Jacob Riis, “How the Other Half Lives” (1894). The publica-— 
tion of this book created an epoch in the history of tenement house ~ 
and other anti-slum agitation. 4 


| 


‘ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 201 


every family to explain why the book was issued, to point 
‘out how its suggestions, if followed, would help her and 
her family. Although the pamphlet, which advised 
against renting dark rooms, and gave a list of things 
against which the tenant has a legal right to complain, 
was intended primarily to benefit the tenant, it at the 
‘same time aided the landlord, in that it covered the duties 
of tenants as well as their rights. 

The Tenement House Committee of the local society 
has ever since taken an active part in the enforcement 
of the tenement house law and has on more than one 
occasion done yeoman service in preventing a mutilation 
of the law at the hands of vested interests. During the 
years IQII, 1912, 1913 alone, no less than 55 different 
bills seeking to weaken the tenement house law in some 
important respect were introduced in the Legislature and 
received the constant scrutiny and attentions of the com- 
mittee. Because of this watchfulness and the opposition 
made manifest to such measures, none of the bills was 
passed. Had not the Tenement House Committee been 
on guard, it is fair to assume that many of these measures 
would have been passed and become laws to the great 
detriment of the living conditions of millions of people. 

Added importance attaches to the success of the hous- 
ing campaign in New York City as it marked a new epoch 
in the interest of housing throughout the country. In 
Chicago a City Homes Association undertook in 1900 a 
general survey of the housing conditions of that city, of 
which there had never been any systematic study, with 
the possible exception of that included in the report of 
the “slums” of the United States by the United States 
Department of Labor, published in 1894.1 The investiga- 
tion by the association led in time to a new housing law, 
which improved materially the standards of space, light 
and air required in tenement construction. The move- 


The slums of Baltimore, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. The 
Federal Bureau of Labor. Seventh Special Report (1894). 


292 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


ment of r900 culminated in r1o912 in the appointment 
of a special committee on housing by the Association of 
Commerce of the City, whose 4,000 members formed a 
widely representative organization of business men in 
Chicago. 

In many other places throughout the country the 
existence of bad housing conditions would have remained 
generally unknown at this time had not workers in the 
homes of the poor iterated and reiterated the conditions 
found in the alleys and poorer streets. Numerous illus- 
trations might be cited of interest in housing developing 
from this type of first-hand knowledge. For example, it 
led the Associated Charities of Washington, D. C., in 
1902’ to form a Committee on the Improvement of Hous- 
ing Conditions, which definitely set about investigating 
housing conditions. This work was taken up by the 
Homes Commission, appointed by President Roosevelt, to 
consider housing and general social conditions in Wash- 
ington. Another outcome of the interest of the Asso- 
ciated Charities in housing conditions was the incorpora- 
tion of a Sanitary Housing Company, backed by the 
same men as those constituting the Committee on the 
Improvement of Housing Conditions of the A. C. It was 
launched as a business philanthropy, paying four per cent. 
return. It was this first-hand knowledge of housing con- 
ditions that early led the Charity Organization Society of 
Youngstown, Ohio, to focus its attention upon the housing 
problem. As a result of its investigation into living 
conditions and a year of agitation for better housing, the 
Modern Homes Company was incorporated with an 
authorized capital stock of $100,000, soon to be increased 
to $500,000, and another successful enterprise was added 
to the “philanthropy and five per cent” building move- 
ment. j 
Other instances might be cited, but that of the Asso- 
ciated Charities of Columbus, which is typical, must 


suffice. After a careful and intensive investigation in 


_ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 293 


1910, the association took steps to drive home to the 
public conscience the evils 6f bad housing. At its invi- 
tation a number of city officials, including the Mayor 
and some newspaper reporters’ made a tour of inspection, 
which led to the drafting of a remarkable housing code 
by the head of the city Law Department. By keeping 
up a constant agitation during the months in which the 
code was in process of formation, by securing for it 
the endorsement of the Society of Architects, the Real 
Estate Association, the Builders’ Exchange, besides many 
non-technical organizations, including the Federation of 
Labor, those interested in housing were able to create 
sufficient public opinion for it to become law. To see that 
the code was enforced, that it was amended by its friends, 
if amendments were found necessary, and to agitate for 
higher ideals in housing a committee of one hundred was 
organized. 

The year following (1911), the first National Confer- 
ence on Housing was held in New York City under the 
auspices of the newly-formed National Housing Associa- 
tion. This conference stands out as a landmark in the 
growth of that public interest in the problem of housing 
to which family case workers had contributed no mean 
part. 


THE MOVEMENT TO PREVENT TUBERCULOSIS AND THE 
CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


Because of the growing conviction that tuberculosis is 
a fertile cause of poverty, the New York Charity Organi- 
zation Society appointed in 1902! a standing Committee 
on the Prevention of Tuberculosis, and so began the first 
active popular campaign in this country to secure adequate 
treatment looking to the cure of poor consumptives, and 
to impress upon all the people the communicable and 


* Three years earlier the society had appointed a special committee to 
report on a proposed plan for a state sanitorium for consumptives. 


294 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


curable nature of the disease.1_ The new committee soon 
began active service, creating a sub-committee on the 
treatment of tuberculosis cases, which, for approximately 


a year, cared for all such cases while studying the subject — 


in the light of this experience. The magnitude of the 


problem so impressed itself on all that in 1904 there was 


launched the National Association for the Study and 
Prevention of Tuberculosis, in the formation of which 
the New York Charity Organization Society participated 
through the active interest of its general secretary. 
Although the new national association soon gained public 
confidence and a substantial measure of public support, 


the New York Society still continued its committee to — 


carry on intensively local educational campaigns through © 


exhibits, lectures, leaflets and motion pictures. By 1905 
it was engaged in a study of the possibility of country 
employment for consumptives, was investigating local 
lodging houses, and in conjunction with the national asso- 


ciation was carrying on a National Tuberculosis Exhibi- — 


tion, visited by a quarter of a million people. Largely 
through the committee’s activities, the first fresh air 
classes in New York’s public schools, and among the 
first in the country, were established in 1909. These 
classes were intended for children who might be termed 
“nre-tuberculous,” that is, children who are anemic, run- 
down, living in families where there were cases of tuber- 
culosis, and who, if left alone, would in all probability 
develop the disease. The work of the committee also 
resulted in increasing the number of tuberculosis clinics 
in the city and led to the organization of an association 
among them looking to a better handling of the local 
problem.” 

*The proposal for a committee came from a settlement worker. See 
Robert Hunter, “Relation between Social Settlements and Charity Or- 
ganization,” Journal of Pol. Econ., Vol. XI, p. 87 (1902). 

*This Association starting with six clinics in 1906 had grown in six 
years to approximately thirty, reaching 20,000 annually. Nearly all were 


established by the Committee for the Prevention of Tuberculosis of 
the New York Society. 


ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 295 


The interest of charity organization societies in attack- 
ing tuberculosis as a cause of poverty was by no means 
limited to the New York Society. As early as 1903 
several other societies! had organized anti-tuberculosis 
committees, which were soon carrying on local educational 
campaigns and agitating for more adequate care of those 
already afflicted. Other societies followed their example. 
Sometimes the pioneer work of such a special committee 
eventuated in an independent association to carry forward 
the work.” 

In a number of communities, as for example, Boston 
and Buffalo, the local charity organization society acted 
as midwife, so to speak, for the local anti-tuberculosis as- 
sociation, stimulating the formation of this new ally in the 
fight against poverty.* In other communities, notably 
Pittsburgh and Chicago, where the charity organ- 
ization society did not initiate the campaign against 
tuberculosis, the closest kind of codperation existed. 
In some places the president and secretary of the charity 
Organization society were members of the executive 
committee of the anti-tuberculosis association. Again 
one finds the new movement at first recruiting its execu- 
tive secretaries from the ranks of family social workers 
or as in the early days in Colorado Springs, sharing a 
secretary with the local charity organization society. 

The growing interest in the cure and prevention of 
tuberculosis explains the active support given by many 
charity organization societies about this time to fresh air 
work, especially for children. Agitation for playgrounds 
and open air schools, the provision of summer outings and 


* Notably the Associated Charities of Washington, D. C., and Min- 
neapolis, Minn. 

? As, for illustration, in Washington, D. C., and Atlanta, Ga. 

* Savannah, Ga., presents an interesting reversal in the early relation- 
ship of the two movements. There the need for a family agency grew 
out of the conditions revealed by a local anti-tuberculosis committee. 
Previous to this the Charity Organization Society of Colorado Springs 
had been organized to care for the tubercular poor, many of whom were 
“homeless men,” attracted there by its climate. 


296 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


baby-saving campaigns characterize this period of history 
of many societies. 

Since these pioneer days the crusade against the great 
White Plague has become an independent movement of 
national proportions. Further reference to it here would 
not be necessary were it not for the fact that the inter- 
state traffic in the tubercular poor has constituted a pecu- 
liarly difficult problem to societies in the West and South- 
West especially, in the “health resort” states. Many 
who go to these localities for their health because of 
their fame as a cure for tuberculosis, soon spend their all. 
Conditions became so acute at one time in Los Angeles 
that the local Associated Charities sent a circular letter to 
different societies, the boards of health, and the press in 
all parts of the United States and Europe, protesting 
against the practice of sending persons suffering from: 
tuberculosis who were in a condition of actual or imme- 
diately prospective indigency. To help meet this situa- 
tion a bill was introduced in Congress in 1916 by Con- 
gressman Kent of California. The bill, subsequently 
defeated after considerable discussion, provided for a 
government subsidy not to exceed seventy-five cents 
per day per patient for the care of indigent tuberculous 
persons who were not legally residents in the state 
where they were temporarily located, on condition 
that the authorities in that place, or some one else, 
paid an equal amount. Opinions in charity organ- 
ization circles, while not unanimous in opposing the 
measure, were almost so. On the ground that the bill 
if passed ‘would increase the amount of lonely and 
neglected misery” by increasing the migration of desti- 
tute tuberculous people to climatic resorts, the American 
Association of Societies for Organizing Charity passed 
resolutions opposing the bill. It held that anything which 
tended to lure people West, away from their homes, was 
mistaken kindness, since it is a delusion that climate cures 


_ ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 297 


tuberculosis, and to sacrifice home and friends for climate 
is often to sacrifice a greater good for a less. It was 
further held that a heavy, if not the heaviest part of the 
problem, is not the care of the patient but of the fam- 
ily dependent upon the patient, for which the bill in ques- 
tion made no provision. Experience had taught charity 
organization workers to view the problem of the tuber- 
cular as a family as well as an individual problem.! 


JUVENILE PROBATION AND THE MOVEMENT FOR CHARITY 
ORGANIZATION 


It is but inevitable, such is the unity of family life, that 
charity organization societies should be interested in the 
wise handling of juvenile delinquency. In 1900 the 
Buffalo Charity Organization Society appointed a Com- 
mittee on Probation, which was successful in securing the 
passage of a state law amending the city charter, so as to 
allow probation officers. Two months later, the Buffalo 
Juvenile Court, almost the first in the country, was estab- 
lished. Hand in hand with this work for the youth of 
the city, the Playground Committee of the society secured 
an appropriation from the City Council of $1,500 for 
a municipal playground and gymnasium, the first in the 
city.” 

About the same time (1901) the New York Society 
placed a woman probation officer at the disposal of one 
of the magistrate’s courts and later of the children’s 
division of the Court of Special Sessions, to demonstrate 
the necessity for adding probation officers in adequate 


*Emphasis on the value of peace of mind in the cure of tuberculosis 
led the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the 
Poor to inaugurate its Home Hospital experiment whereby families com- 
ing to the attention of the Association in which one or more members 
were afflicted with tuberculosis were treated while keeping the family 
together in their own home. For the results of this interesting experi- 
ment see ‘Poverty and Tuberculosis,’ Publication No. 84, New York 
Avigs ty. (rots). 

*Anon., Charities, Vol. IV, No. 23, p. 12 (1900). 


2098 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


numbers to the machinery for the administration of 
justice. 

Through the codperation of the authorities of the school 
in which delinquent boys were confined, the Chicago 
Bureau of Charities‘ had a plan at this time by which 
it was informed of the approaching liberation of boys 
who were the victims of improper home surroundings 
and whose conduct while in confinement indicated that 
they were especially susceptible of good influences. In 
such instances, the Bureau’s agents made a careful inquiry 
into the history of the boys, and where deemed advisable, 
arranged in advance of their release for some proper dis- 
position of them. On release they were placed where it 
was believed they would have new and better opportuni- 
ties in life. 

As early as 1898 the Baltimore Society devoted a spe- 
cial number of its publication, The Charities Record, to 
pointing out the need of a compulsory school attendance 
law with competent and trustworthy officers to enforce it. 
The desirability of such a law and of a probation system 
for delinquent boys and girls were outstanding features of 
the society’s report for 1902. The establishment by act 
of legislature of a Parental School in Colorado was largely 
due to the activities of the Denver Society.2 It should 
be recalled that the probation system for children has 
had its remarkable development in this country since 
1902. 

A recent instance of codperation between a charity 
organization society and the courts was the creation 
by the United Charities of Chicago early in 1919 of 
the position of court representative. This represents a 
broadening of the basis of codperation over the days when 
interest centered almost wholly in juvenile cases. The 


*Now the United Charities. 
7 Anon., “Organized Charity at Work,” Charities, Vol. VIII, p. 40 
(1902). 


ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 299 


duties of this new office, which serves as intermediary 
between the society and the courts, are: 


(1) To confer with visitors of the United Charities on 
cases which the visitors think need court action; to advise 
them whether the cases are ready to take to court; and to 
direct them in the preparation of the necessary evidence. 

(2) To take the necessary steps to bring the cases to 
court, such as filing petitions in the Juvenile Court and 
taking out warrants in the Court of Domestic Relations. 

(3) To present the cases in court, bringing in the vis- 
itors only when their personal testimony is indispensable. 

(4) To act as a go-between and interpreter between the 
various courts of the city and the visitors of the United 
Charities, in order that a better understanding of prin- 
ciple and function may be brought about on both sides.? 


LEGAL AID AND CHARITY ORGANIZATION 


When one realizes the many legal aspects of much 
family social work, and that family rehabilitation often 
includes legal aid as well as relief, it is not surprising 
that a number of charity organization societies have long 
been interested in securing legal justice for their clients. 
This interest has usually taken the form of codperation 
with local Legal Aid Societies. However, in a few 
instances, as in Baltimore and Buffalo, charity organiza- 
tion societies early established legal aid bureaus of their 
own. More recent instances of this development have 
been in St. Paul, where the United Charities has a legal 
aid department, and Chicago, whose United Charities 
recently amalgamated with the Legal Aid Society of that 
city.2, The outstanding advantages resulting from the 
amalgamation are the districting of the legal aid service 
and the supplying of the services of trained social case 


* Anon., “Court Representative for Charities,’ The Survey, Vol. XLII, 


p. 875 (1919). 
* September, 1919. 


300 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


workers for those cases in which the social aspects are 
as important if not more so than the legal. These 
advantages are secured through placing social workers, 
specially trained in legal aid, in five of the ten district 
offices of the United Charities. In the general offices are 
four attorneys, the director of the legal aid bureau, and 
two social workers. 


IMPROVING THE MACHINERY OF LEGAL JUSTICE 1 


A few societies were not content with rendering legal 
aid alone. ‘They became interested in the machinery 
itself of legal justice, particularly as administered in the 
inferior criminal courts. ‘To the poor, especially to 
the ignorant and foreign-born poor, these courts repre- 
sent the justice of the land. It is through them with their 
summary procedure, and the enormous number, range and 
variety of their cases, rather than through the courts 
of superior jurisdiction that the social conditions of 
these people are materially affected.”* Thus, in 1909, 
the Buffalo Society took an active part in the passage of 
the City’s Courts Laws, under which all the lower crim- 
inal and civil courts of the city were reorganized. 

The year following, the New York Charity Organiza- 
tion Society created a Committee on Criminal Courts, the 
pioneer of its kind. The recent enactment of the Inferior 
Criminal Courts Act effecting important reforms in their 
administration had furnished an opportune time for the 
creation of such a committee to take cognizance of the 
special problems of these courts and by cooperating with 
the magistrates and justices, to aid in their solution. 

In 1912 the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities created a 
similar Committee on Inferior Courts. Among its first 


* Work .in this field did not begin until after the close of this chapter. 
However, it is included here as a later part of that development in 
some societies which culminated in the establishment of distinct «de- 
partments dealing exclusively with social conditions. 

* Twenty-ninth Annual Report of The Charity Organization Society of 
the City of New York, p. 71 (1911). 


|: a OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 30I 


‘tasks were a campaign for an adequate building for the 
children’s court of Brooklyn and the establishment of the 
finger print system in the Magistrates Courts in the city. 

Within three years of the time of the creation of the 
Committee on Criminal Courts of the New York Society 
the system of fining prostitutes was abolished and the 
finger print system of dealing with vagrants adopted. A 
children’s court, with a paid staff of probation officers, 
was developed, and a new children’s court building, 
afterward erected, was assured. 

In all these changes the Committee on Criminal Courts 
played an active part, placing at the disposal of the 
judges expert service of various kinds. In 1915 the com- 
mittee’s bill amending generally the Inferior Criminal 
Courts Act of the City of New York became law, result- 
ing in an independent children’s court; speedier justice 
by granting magistrates power to sentence all misde- 
meanants; the creation of a departmental court for all 
cases where city or state departments are the complain- 
ants, the consolidation of magistrates’ courts, the reor- 
ganization of the probation system, the extension of the 
finger print system to cover the entire Greater New York, 
and improvements in the administration of the Domes- 
tic Relations Court, the first in the United States. 


DEPARTMENTS FOR IMPROVING SOCIAL CONDITIONS 


The movements just noted which stressed the preven- 
tion of poverty at first functioned in many places through 
separate committees of the local charity organization 
society. In several of the larger societies these com- 
mittees ultimately were brought together to form a dis- 
tinct department in the society’s organization to which 
the appellation Department for Improving Social Condi- 
tions, or a similar title, was attached. Thus in 1907 the 
New York Society, which by its pioneer work for housing 
reform and the prevention of tuberculosis, had early be- 


302 , CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


come the most distinguished representative of societies 
undertaking preventive work, created a Department for 
the Improvement of Social Conditions, thus organizing 
for more efficient administration the constructive social 
undertakings already in operation and providing for 
expansion in such directions as the needs of the city might 
demand and the resources of the society permit. 

In 1912 the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities created a 
Department of Social Betterment by combining its 
previously existing Committee on the Prevention of 
Tuberculosis and the Tenement House Committee, and 
adding a newly formed Committee on Inferior Courts. 
The year following the New York Association for Improv- 
ing the Condition of the Poor created its Department of 
Social Welfare to foster “preventive and constructive 
social measures for the welfare of the poor of the city 
as distinguished from relief measures—affecting par- 
ticular individuals and families.” + It has aimed to make 
its work supplement rather than duplicate the similar 
department of the New York Charity Organization 
Society. 

These new departments aim to attack the causes of 
poverty by organizing educational crusades, by advocat- 
ing state legislation, municipal ordinarices and budget 
appropriations and by aiding in law enforcement. They 
are the logical development in a sense of the many extra 
activities which charity organization societies added to 
their day’s work during the period under review. In 
reality, the work of these departments is the work of 
a Civic organization devoted to social reform. They 
might just as appropriately be separate organizations 
since they have nothing to do with the direct care and 
treatment of maladjusted families, but they have a large 
and useful field of their own. They enjoy the services 
of experienced experts, working under the head of the 
department. Financial support often comes from distinct 


*See Anon., The Survey, Vol. XXIX, p. 895 (1913). 


‘ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 303 


sources, while the budgets of such departments are 
planned apparently with complete independence of the 
other work of the society. 


THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT AND THE CARE 
OF DEPENDENT CHILDREN 


Family social workers have long taken an interest in 
the care of dependent children who, for one reason or 
another, are deprived of the birthright of their parents’ 
care. As early as 1882 the Children’s Aid Society of 
Pennsylvania was launched, largely through the efforts 
of those identified with the Philadelphia Society for 
Organizing Charity. Charity organization societies else- 
where took up the movement for a better handling of 
the problem of dependent children. To their inspira- 
tion it was due that the number of charitable societies 
which care for the poor, deserted, neglected and exposed 
children increased in a very rapid manner.’ 

Not only have they been interested in the establishment 
of children’s aid societies, but everywhere progressive 
charity organization societies have fought against institu- 
tional treatment for children and have exerted their 
influence on the side of child placing. Thus, to cite a 
more recent illustration; when the Department of Public 
Charities of New York City, then under the direction of 
an experienced family worker,’ reorganized in 1915, the 
work of its Bureau of Dependent Children for the pur- 
pose of placing orphaned and other dependent children 
under the age of eight in families of their own religious 
faith instead of in private child-caring institutions,* as 


* Ashrott, “Poverty and Its Relief in the United States,” p. 14; quoted 
by Robert Treat Paine, Jr., “Pauperism in the Great Cities,’ Lend-a- 
Hand, Vol. XII, p. 203 (1894). 

*John A. Kingsbury. 

*The pian of placing young dependent children in family homes in 
preference to institutions was in harmony with the White House Con- 
ference in 1909, approved then by Catholics, Jews and Protestants and 
indorsed in practice by charity organization societies everywhere. 


304 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


had been the practice in the past, it received some of its 
heartiest support from the family welfare agencies of the 
city.t| Approximately $150,000 was contributed by phil- 
anthropic citizens to meet for three years the adminis- 
trative expenses of the plan.” 


PHILANTHROPIC PUBLICATION 


Because of their early interest in methods of work and 
in standards, charity organization workers, as was seen 
in the last chapter, were pioneers in the field of philan- 
thropic publication.* 

The first successful effort in this country, however, to 
give social workers a publication comparable to the 
physician’s medical journal was made in 1901 by the New 
York Charity Organization Society, when by powers 
conferred in its charter to “promote social reform” it 
launched Charities as a weekly publication.* This was 
a landmark in the field of philanthropic publica- 
tions. 

With the founding of Charities in 1901, the realization 
of the need of an organ for all interested in problems of 
the common welfare that should be truly national in scope 
rapidly crystallized and several magazines were united 
with it. The first of these mergers occurred in 1905, 
when The Commons, which had been published at the 


*The New York C. O. S. and the A. I. C. P. 

* Unfortunately much of the excellent start made at this time was 
afterward lost through a less enlightened leadership in the Department. 

*See pages 234-238. 

*The tap root of Charities was a magazine of the same name 
founded in 1897 as a monthly news sheet for members of the New 
York Society and the year following made into a weekly publication. 
The Charities Review, mentioned in the text, as founded in 1891 by the 
New York Society, was taken over by the New York Society in 1901 
after it had been for a while under the management of an independent 
corporation organized for the purpose in 1898. It was renamed Chari- 
ties, and combined with it was the weekly publication of that name. 
It was the personal support and interest of the president of the New 
York Society and of a few philanthropic persons under the lead of the 
society, which made possible both Charities Review and Charities. 


. ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 305 


Chicago neighborhood house of that name under the 
editorship of Professor Graham Taylor, was united with 
it, the combined periodicals using the joint name of 
Charities and The Commons, which name was retained 
until 1909, when the present name of The Survey was 
adopted. In 1906, Jewish Charity, edited by Dr. Lee K. 
Frankel, was also merged with Charities and The Com- 
mons. In each merger the society interpreted its steward- 
ship in the broadest way, and the various magazines 
merged were accepted in a spirit of trust. In 1905 the 
Central Council of the New York Society appointed, as 
a constituent committee of the society, a publication com- 
mittee to “give national breadth and effect to the work 
of the magazine.” ‘This committee included such signal 
leaders in social movements as Jacob A. Riis, Jane 
Addams and Joseph Lee. From the beginning the New 
York Society made current appropriations of usually 
$3,000 a year, and was financially liable for its debts. 
Although it held title, the magazine was in no sense an 
organ of the New York Society. Full editorial respon- 
sibility was from the first vested in the editor. The 
progress of the journal from then on has been steady. It 
early inaugurated a field work department for the exten- 
sion of charity organization principles which was destined 
to open a new epoch in the history of the charity organiza- 
tion movement. 

In 1907-1908 the publication committee carried 
through the Pittsburgh Survey’ the most suggestive civic 
event of the time. Few of the offspring of the charity 
organization movement have had more far-reaching con- 
sequences or given greater promise of the future than the 
Pittsburgh Survey, the pioneer social survey in this 
country. Interpretation of hours, wages, housing, court 
procedure and all the rest, in terms of standard of living 
and the recognition that the basis for judging of social 
conditions is the measure of life they allow to those 


*See pp. 337-406. 


306 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


affected by them, constitute the very essence of the de- 
velopments that have since taken place in social work. 

In 1912 a point was reached where “‘far-seeing steward- 
ship called for a national, self-dependent organization,” 
and the parent society not only launched The Survey as 
an independent venture, but placed it on a mutual basis. 
Thereupon the New York Charity Organization Society 
turned over to the Survey Associates, Inc.,? the publica- 
tion of The Survey, the maintenance of the Survey press 
service, and other activities theretofore carried on under 
the Charities Publication Committee. In recounting the 
services which the charity organization movement and 
those in its ranks have rendered to the general social work 
of the country, few contributions will rank higher than 
the fostering of The Survey and its predecessors in the 
days when a national journal devoted to the common 
welfare seemed all but impossible.* 


THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT AND TRAINING 
FOR SOCIAL WorRK 


Because certain leaders in charity organization early 
recognized the value of training for their field of service, 
and because the charity organization movement has been 
surpassed by none in its efforts to perfect the technique 
of its work nor in the importance it has attached to 


*The spread of the social survey as an organized method of social 
discovery has since been most rapid. So great was the demand for 
information on social surveys that in 1912 the Russell Sage Foundation 
initiated a Department of Surveys and Exhibits. 

*The Survey Associates is a membership corporation, chartered No- 
vember 4, 1912, under the laws of the state of New York. Its stated 
purpose is “to advance the cause of constructive philanthropy by the 
publication and circulation of books, pamphlets, and periodicals, and by 
conducting any investigations useful or necessary for the preparation 
therefor.” 

°Mr. Jeffrey R. Brackett has named “the founding and fostering of 
The Charities Review and the Summer School in Philanthropic Work” 
as constituting two debts of obligation to the New York Society resting 
on all social workers. See Jeffrey R. Brackett, “Present Opportunities 
for Training in Charitable Work,” Charities, Vol. VI, p. 423 (1d01). 


‘ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 307 


training, its contribution to social education in the 
United States has been unique. As charity organization 
societies had a considerable part in creating a demand 
for trained service, it was but natural that they should 
feel some responsibility for helping to supply the need. 

As early as 1882 the New York Society began a library 
of books on charity for circulation among its workers. 
Other societies followed the experiment. In 1891 the 
Brooklyn Bureau of Charities began conducting a con- 
ference course and study class to help in the training of 
its workers, including its friendly visitors. By 1892 the 
Boston Society had worked out a definite plan for the 
education of friendly visitors and for maintaining their 
interest. In 1894 the New York Society conducted a 
course of twelve lectures on practical social problems. 
By the later nineties the Boston Associated Charities 
adopted a plan, destined to be followed with modifications 
by several other societies, whereby it paid people to learn 
the technique of charity organization, provided they 
seemed to possess the other necessary qualifications. A 
not unusual feature of the winter’s program in a number 
of societies was a course of lectures on social and philan- 
thropic subjects. In 1901 the Philadelphia Society organ- 
ized the General Secretary’s Weekly Class of Workers in 
Training. Other societies followed, giving similar instruc- 
tion to their workers. 

Although a number of American university teachers 
have made invaluable contributions to the charity organi- 
zation movement through the social vision imparted to 
their students, who later became identified with the new 
point of view in charity,’ the first suggestions for a pro- 
fessional school of social work ‘‘came not from colleges 
or universities, but from the members of the International 
and the National Conference of Charities, and the first 

*Of these special mention should be made of Francis G. Peabody at 
Harvard University, Herbert B. Adams at Johns Hopkins University, 


Richard T. Ely at the University of Wisconsin, and Simon N, Patten 
at the University of Pennsylvania. 


308 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


professional classes were organized, not by an educa- 
tional institution, but by the directors and staff of a 
private charitable agency.” + It was at the International 
Congress of Charities in 1893 that Miss Anna L. Dawes, 
of Pittsfield, Mass., in a significant paper on ““The Need 
of Training Schools for a New Profession,” pointed out 
the desirability of a new course of study “in some estab- 
lished institution or in an institution by itself, or by the 
old-fashioned method never yet improved upon for actual 
development, the method of experimental training as the 
personal assistant of some skilled worker,” in which it 
should be possible for those who wished to take up char- 
itable work ‘‘to find some place of studying it as a pro- 
fession.”’* At the National Conference of Charities and 
Correction of 1897, and at the annual meeting of the 
American Academy of Political and Social Science in 
1898, Miss Mary E. Richmond voiced still more definitely 
the pressing need of such schools.* 

The first steps toward establishing a professional school 
were taken in the summer of 1898 when the New York 
Charity Organization Society organized a training class 
in “applied philanthropy,” * which became in 1go1 the 
Summer School for Philanthropic Workers, and, in 1904, 
The New York School of Philanthropy. The last-named 
provided systematic instruction for the full academic 
year of eight months designed to meet the needs of be- 
ginners wishing to prepare themselves for social service 
either as professional or volunteer workers.° Before the 
year was out the school was handsomely endowed.® Each 


*Edith Abbott, “Education for Social Work,” Report of the Com- 
missioner of Education, Vol. I, p. 347 (1015). 

*See Report of International Congress of Charities, seventh section, 
p. 20 (1893). 
; ea al National Conference of Charities and Correction, p. 182 
1897). 

*Dr. Philip W. Ayres was the director. 

°*Dr. Edward T. Devine, general Secretary of the New York Charity 
Organization Society, became the director of the new enterprise. 

°This endowment was increased through bequests under the will of 
late John S. Kennedy to $1,000,000. 


._ ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 309 


successive year has witnessed the enlargement and en- 
richment of the curriculum. Its diploma is now awarded 
only after the satisfactory completion of two years of 
work. In 1g19 it changed its name to The New York 
School of Social Work, a title more descriptive of the 
scope of its work. 

Special mention has been made of The New York 
School of Social Work, not only because it was the 
pioneer school in the field, but also because it has 
remained a pioneer and is the only school in the As- 
sociation of Training Schools that is conducted by a char- 
ity organization society. This does not mean, however, 
that charity organization workers have not taken im- 
portant parts in the work of the other training schools. 
The Pennsylvania School for Social Service, organized in 
1910 by a number of social agencies of the city, is under 
especial obligation to the Philadelphia Society for Or- 
ganizing Charity for hearty cooperation. Even where 
the professional school is under the auspices of a college 
or university as at Simmons College and Western Re- 
serve University, usually the district offices of the local 
charity organization society afford the student in train- 
ing some of his or her most valuable field work expe- 
rience. To meet “the problem of the charity organ- 
ization worker who is already at work, but who seeks 
further opportunity for training,’ the Charity Organ- 
ization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation, 
established, in June, r910, a month’s institute under the 
auspices of the New York School of Philanthropy. 
The Institute was not proposed to be a school using 
the usual lecture and recitation method, but a month’s 
conference of professional workers in which most of 
the work is of a practical character and the instruc- 
tion of a most informal nature and given by group 
leaders. The general secretaries attending the Institute 
were in charge of one leader, the district workers in charge 
of another, and the case workers in charge of a third, 


310 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


each a specialist in his or her particular line. The first 
institute proved so successful that it has been continued 
ever since. 

No one factor has more hastened the recognition of 
social work as a profession than the advent of training 
schools, and no movement has in turn contributed more 
toward the technique of social case work without which 
the curriculum of a training school would be sadly incom- 
plete than the movement whose history is here recorded. 


THE BEGGAR AND THE VAGRANT 2 


Although the period 1896 to 1904 was distinguished by 
the many efforts which charity organization societies put 
forth to attack the causes of poverty, noteworthy prog- 
ress was made in meeting certain problems with which 
the oldest societies had long labored, such as begging, 
vagrancy, desertion and non-support. 

The handling of the first two of these problems had 
been far from satisfactory in many communities. Phila- 
delphia vied with Chicago in the number of its beggars 
and vagrants. The more successful beggars of the former 
city were “earning” from two to four dollars a day, 
according as they ‘‘worked” on the more modest streets 
or in fashionable districts. This estimate did not take 
into account big days, favored, well-paid-for spots, or 
special infirmities.* 

In Baltimore, the abuse of keeping lodgers in the sta- 
tion-houses with its encouragement to lawlessness was 
notorious. For years the almshouse was used as a winter 
resort for tramps and homeless men, the city transporta- 


*For a number of years it has been held directly under the auspices 
of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation. 
* A vagrant or tramp is an able-bodied man without any visible means 
of support and without a fixed abode. In this last respect he differs 
from the typical beggar. A characteristic frequently common to both is 
that of being ‘“work-shy.” 
| eae “Suppression of Mendicancy,” Charities, Vol. IX, p. 486 
1902). 


ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 3II 


tion fund administered in a haphazard and often harmful 
fashion, and city money appropriated to some of the medi- 
cal agencies and so-called charities which were not worthy 
of public aid. Efforts to change these conditions had been 
mostly fruitless because the mayor and most of the public 
officials were not actively sympathetic with reform. 

The inadequacy of the police station system of caring 
for the homeless early led charity organization societies 
in a number of places to erect wayfarers’ lodges and to 
maintain wood-yards as work tests, but these were often 
inadequate in accommodation ” or did little ‘“‘case work,” 3 
frequently being used as substitutes for all case work. 

Soup kitchens, bread lines and other unwise philan- 
thropies which supplied lodging far below cost and no 
questions asked were constant inducements for the ‘‘work- 
shy” to flock to centers in which they flourished. The 
care-free citizen who prefers to sacrifice the small amount 
demanded by the mendicant rather than spend time in 
investigating “his story” added further to the size of the 
problem. Although Massachusetts could claim a state law 
which made it a crime to beg and which, moreover, was 
enforced, she was the exception rather than the rule.* 
Moreover, such a state law merely solved the problem 
for Massachusetts. The course of the work-shy vagrant 
is always in the line of least resistance. Vagrancy, and to 
a less extent begging, are problems that cannot be solved 
on state lines, much less by municipalities, except by 
concerted action. 

The numbers of beggars and vagrants in each com- 
munity were in inverse ratio to the intelligence and vigor 


* Jeffrey R. Brackett, “Supervision and Education in Charity,” p. 139 
(1903). 

*In 1900 it appears 40,000 lodgings were supplied by the police sta- 
tions in Philadelphia. In order to remove the excuse for this situation, 
the Philadelphia Society began in 1oo1 the erection of a third way- 
farers’ lodge. 

* Alice Willard Solenberger, “One Thousand Homeless Men,” pp. 
vii and viii (1911). 

*Anon., “Treatment of Vagrants,” Charities, Vol. VII, p. 412 (1901). 


312 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


with which each sought to meet the situation. In a num- 
ber of places the methods employed marked distinct 
advances over what had previously obtained in that 
they included the cooperation of the local police depart- 
ment. In response to a request from the Associated Char- 
ities the Police Department of the City of Boston in 1897 
detailed two special officers to look after beggars and 
vagrants. In citizens’ dress, and with no regular beat, 
they did far more toward discovering and arresting these 
offenders than the regular patrolman had ever been able 
to do. According to the police rules, officers are sup- 
posed to warn beggars and explain the law to them, but 
if the men appear to be habitual offenders the officers, by 
engaging them in conversation, are often able to arrest 
them as vagrants on their own statements. All records 
of arrest and sentence since the beginning have been kept 
in the registration bureau of the Associated Charities. 
The officers reported to the Associated Charities daily, 
and from time to time referred to it such persons as 
it seemed possible to educate without first depriving them 
of liberty. At first the offenders were sent on short 
sentences of from two to six months to the House of Cor- 
rection. Under the law, the judges began sending the 
men to the State Farm, where the sentence was indeter- 
minate, the maximum being two years. There the men 
were kept steadily at work and had a chance to learn 
some useful occupation. It was felt that keeping them in 
this reformatory under strict prison discipline during the 
summer months would have good results.1. The refusal 
of the police authorities to lodge wayfarers at the various 
police stations also helped to reduce the size of the prob- 
lem in Boston. | 

The New York Society had long had a standing Com- — 
mittee on Vagrancy. Nearly twenty years earlier the so- 
ciety first took direct action relative to Street begging 


*Anon., “Suppression of Mendicancy,” Charities, Vol. IX, p. 483 
(1902). 


ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 313 


in New York by the appointment of special officers to 
cooperate with the Police Department in keeping the evil 
within bounds. In 1897 the service was discontinued 
when the Board of Police Commissioners of New York 
City detailed a squad of special vagrancy officers to co- 
operate with the Society’s Committee on Mendicancy. 
This arrangement, together with one with the Depart- 
ment of Public Charities, resulted in closing the police 
stations and the lodging house barge of the Department 
of Charities to transient lodgers, and in sending all appli- 
cants for gratuitous lodging to the Wayfarers’ Lodge 
maintained by the Society. Unfortunately the history of 
this experiment was one of rapid disintegration, so that 
in 1901 the Society found it necessary to reénforce its 
efforts to suppress begging. This it did by appointing 
a special Mendicancy Officer 1 of its own, and soon there- 
after the city detailed six police officers to work under 
him as a mendicancy squad. These men began an active 
campaign to clear the streets of professional beggars. All 
beggars caught were sent for six months to the work- 
house. As a result several hundred beggars left the city 
and seldom was one to be seen on the streets. 
A prominent feature of the crusade was that help was 
given by those to whom the Society could turn for this 
purpose to any who could be persuaded to adopt a 
more honest means of livelihood. 

For the first time in the history of the city the problem 
of mendicancy was adequately dealt with. Unfortunately 
in 1906 the city, on the plea of economy, felt compelled 
to withdraw the services of the police who had been de- 
tailed to the work of the Mendicancy Committee of the 
Society, and the year following, treatment of individual 
cases by this committee was discontinued, as it was felt 
that it would be useless to continue employing a special 
Mendicancy Officer without the cooperation of the 


*James Forbes, “The Work of the Mendicancy Police in New York,” 
Charities, Vol. XI, pp. 576-8 (1903). 


314 CHARITY ORGANIZATION. MOVEMENT 


Police Department of the city. Although it was unusual 
for police to be under the direction of a private society, 
it must nevertheless be admitted that the plan worked 
admirably. 

In Indianapolis where, in the winter of 1900-01, a class 
of blind beggars along with others, more or less infested 
the streets of the city, the Charity Organization So- 
ciety assured the city authorities that honest persons de- 
siring to lead a more honorable life should have the oppor- 
tunity. Often the Society offered to keep them several 
days without work or price, but no one was found who 
could be thus kept for more than a day or two. Good 
use of this fact took away the excuse, “‘I have to beg for a 
living.” A decided victory was gained with the authori- 
ties, especially the police, in that they no longer felt that, 
this class was deserving of the indulgence they had for- 
merly been given. ‘The Society then employed a special 
officer who, with the police and police judge, nearly 
cleared the streets of mendicants. The work was not 
entirely repressive, as constructive work with some was 
carried on with good results. 

The lamentable conditions in Baltimore, already men- 
tioned, were radically improved when the Mayor’s office, 
in the period under review, turned to the local Charity 
Organization Society to investigate and advise on certain 
cases of applicants for free transportation. Within a year 
the Mayor’s fund for this purpose was made more effec- 
tive, though the amount of it was largely reduced.” 
At the request of the president of the police commission- 
ers, the Charity Organization Society aided the commis- 
sioners in doing away with the abuse of lodgers in the 


* During the fifteen months of the Mendicancy Squad, Mr. Forbes 
and his seven men arrested 18,063 persons, while all the other police 
of the city combined arrested only 5,965. Prof. Charles R. Henderson 
expressed the opinion in rg9ro that the New York Society had grappled 
with the problem of vagrancy as no other organization in the country 
had done. The City Club Bulletin of Chicago, p. 149 (1910). 

* Jeffrey R. Brackett, “Supervision and Education in Charity,” p. 139 

1903). 


ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 315 


station-houses. The direct result was the important 
municipal reform of the substitution for such lodgings with 
their encouragement to shiftlessness, of relief in work at 
the friendly inn for all able-bodied homeless men. ‘The 
real reform came when a reform mayor appointed a 
board of trustees of the poor who believed in the prin- 
ciples of the Charity Organization Society and the major- 
ity of whom were actually managers of the society. Co- 
operation between the society and the city hall, which had 
been valuable as a means of education, was replaced by 
the better state of things in which the city’s own officials” 
did “their own specific work comparatively well.” 1 

It was not, however, until after the close of the period 
of history covered by this chapter that Baltimore took 
its most effective step in attacking its problems of beg- 
gary and vagrancy. In rg12 at the suggestion of the 
secretary of the Federated Charities, formerly the 
Charity Organization Society, a number of plain clothes 
men were assigned to duty as mendicancy officers. Their 
first obligation was to observe the distinction between 
beggars and vagrants, warning the former of their offense 
and conducting the offenders to their homes and report- 
ing their names and addresses to the Federated Charities, 
the Federated Jewish Charities or the St. Vincent de Paul 
Society, which societies had previously agreed to visit 
promptly and to deal with each as with.any other case 
of need. 

In the case of a vagrant the mendicancy officer had no 
alternative but to arrest. Vagrants under sixteen years 
of age are taken at once to the juvenile court to be dealt 
with in the same manner as other juvenile offenders. 
Vagrants between sixteen and twenty-one are sent to the 
proper custodial or correctional institution, the magistrate 
having no power under the law other than that of commit- 
ment. The prisoner may, however, be held in custody for 


* Jeffrey R. Brackett, “Supervision and Education in Charity,” p. 139 
(1903). 


316 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


a reasonable time, pending an investigation by one of the 
three societies mentioned. If it be ascertained that the 
prisoner is a runaway child, a defective or a delinquent 
of any kind, who should be restored to parents or friends 
or public authorities, the magistrate may release him in 
such custody as the case may require. A similar pro- 
cedure is used in the case of adult vagrants, except that 
if the investigation requires a long time, a jury trial may 
be asked for by the state’s attorney. If the accused be 
found to be a deserting husband or a mental defective, 
he may be released. Otherwise, he may be brought to 
trial and committed under the law. It is declared that 
the working out of this plan has made Baltimore freer 
than ever of mendicants.' ’ 

A considerable element in the success of all the plans 
just described has been the cooperation of the local police 
department.2, Even when no mendicancy squads were 
organized an efficient police department codperating with 
the local charity organization society was able to accom- 
plish much. 

Throughout the period charity organization societies, 
believing that the care of the vagrant is peculiarly a gov- 
ernmental responsibility, and wishing to relieve them- 
selves of the heavy expense of maintaining wayfarers’ 
lodges, agitated for the erection of municipal lodging 
houses to replace police stations used for such purposes. 

In New York City after many delays, the city had 
opened its municipal lodging house in 1898, thereby mak- 
ing unnecessary the society’s Wayfarers’ Lodge, which 
was accordingly discontinued. The city of Chicago fol- 
lowed suit in 1901, when it erected its municipal lodging 
house after a long agitation® by many of the social 


*See Anon., The Survey, Vol. XXXIX, pp. 89, 90 (10912). 

* This had been demonstrated for a number of years in Buffalo where 
the problem was well in hand. A campaign launched in 1914 by The 
Philadelphia S. O. C. in close codperation with the Department of Public 
Safety resulted in fourteen months’ time in removing over eleven hun- 
dred mendicants from the streets of Philadelphia. 

°In 1899 the Chicago Bureau of Charities had appointed a special 


._ ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 317 


workers of the city, one of whose number, trained by the 
Chicago Bureau of Charities, became the first head. Bos- 
ton already had a Wayfarers’ Lodge under the supervision 
of the Overseers of the Poor. In Philadelphia the local 
society met the increasing demands by the erection at 
considerable expense of a third Wayfarers’ Lodge.! 
Probably the greatest gain in the treatment of beggar 
or vagrant during the years under review was the grow- 
ing realization that he needed “more help, more sympathy, 


oY 


more thought and care” ? than he had been receiving. In 
the earlier days of the movement, the care of homeless 
men was viewed as a problem requiring separate * but 
more or less uniform treatment.* It was the realization 
that the homeless were being treated in an inadequate 
way that led those working in the Central District ® of 
the Chicago society to begin, in 1900, the working out of 
a new plan of treatment for such cases. This consisted in 
applying to them the methods with certain adaptations, 
used in the social diagnosis and treatment of families.® 
The need for individualization of treatment of the home- 
less has since been increasingly recognized by all who 


committee to investigate the problem of housing homeless men. Its 
report led to valuable results. 

*In 1914 the society asked without success that the city take over 
its wayfarers’ lodges to be conducted as municipal lodging houses. The 
society felt after having annually faced a deficit that it was spending 
huge sums of money annually “which should be used in another form 
of charity with which the city would be unable to cope.” It accord- 
ingly closed its various lodges. 

*In 1902 a special fellowship for the study of Homeless Men was 
established by the Philadelphia Society in codperation with the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania. 

* An illustration is found in the case of the New York Society in the 
transfer in 1890 of the care of homeless cases from districts to a Cen- 
tral Committee. 

*Some wayfarers’ lodges and woodyards were run upon the blame- 
worthy principle of assuming that where a youth or a man was given 
work (made for him) that there the agency’s responsibility ended. 

5In Chicago the Central District at the time under review was 
handling a majority of all such cases, many of which were transferred 
to it from other districts. 

*An interesting account of the results of the new method is to be 
found in “One Thousand Homeless Men,” by Alice Willard Solenberger 


(19rr). 


318 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


come into contact with the vagrant and the homeless. 
Thus for some years the Associated Charities of Boston 
and the Boston Provident Association have maintained a 
Joint Department for Helping Homeless Men. Like- 
wise the New York Charity Organization Society and the 
local Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor 
maintain a Joint Application Bureau for Homeless Men. 
In each a secretary is employed who gives his full time 
to the problem of the homeless man and his efforts are 
devoted almost entirely to personal work with the men, 
seeking to get them the best medical treatment when 
needed, inducing others, especially young boys and men, 
to return to their homes in other cities; in short, doing 
all that may restore them to self-respect and independ- 
ence. 

More and more such fundamental preventive meas- 
ures as education for efficiency and vocational guidance, 
are seen to have their bearing on the ultimate solution 
of the problem, while for those already well on the path 
of vagrancy, such measures are advocated as the closing 
of the railroads to the brake-beam or freight car dead- 
head, compulsory labor colonies, and the securing of 
interstate agreements to prevent “passing on,” if no in- 
terstate law be possible.1. It was in line with this last 
suggestion that a committee of the National Conference 
of Charities and Correction of 1903 drafted a transpor- 
tation agreement which provides chiefly that free or 
charity-rate transportation shall be issued only on satis- 
factory proof that the applicant has at the point of desti- 
nation a legal residence, employment or other definite 
means of support, or friends or relatives who will agree 
to provide for him; that such transportation shall be 

*See O. F. Lewis, “Vagrancy in the United States” (1907). Dr. 
Lewis here shows that vagrancy is a national problem. He points 
out the following means of solution: (1) codperation between railroads 
and local authorities in the prosecution of railroad trespassers; (2) 
municipal lodging houses under supervision of local health officials in 


all cities where there is a vagrancy problem, with compulsory labor 
colonies in each state. 


‘ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 319 


clear through to the point of destination; and that each 
signer shall codperate with each other to prevent the 
aimless sending of dependents about the country. One 
hundred and thirty-nine charity organization societies 
immediately obligated themselves in the matter.! 
In 1907 a committee was appointed at the National 
Conference of Charities and Correction to create a nation- 
wide interest in the problem of vagrancy. In 1909 New 
York State passed a law creating the first farm colony 
in America “for the detention, human discipline, instruc- 
tion and reformation of male adults committed thereto as 
tramps and vagrants.” ” 

One of the first steps taken by the American Associa- 
tion of Societies for Organizing Charity, founded in rorr, 
was the appointment of a committee on the problem of 
the homeless man to formulate a working program for 
all its members. 


THE PROBLEM OF DESERTION AND NON-SUPPORT 


An evil equal to, if not greater than, vagrancy, that has 
long perplexed family social workers is desertion and non- 
‘support.’ Interest in the broken family has been in no 
sense local, as a study of the annual reports of societies 
in all parts of the country will testify, nor has it been of 
recent origin, though the first comprehensive studies of the 
problem were made in the years covered by this chapter. 


*By 1917 this agreement was signed by more than 800 municipalities, 
state boards of charity, other public officials and charitable organiza- 
tions. 

1The legislative campaign leading up to the passage of the bill was 
conducted largely by a joint committee of the Charity Organization So- 
ciety and the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor of 
New York City. As early as 1883 the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities 
had urged the need of a vagrant colony to help solve the problem. 

* Reports of charitable societies showed in 1905 that from year to year 
deserted families formed between seven and thirteen per cent of the 
total number of families in charge. Twenty-five per cent of the com- 
mitments of children to institutions in New York City were attributed 
to desertion. See Lilian Brandt, “Five Hundred and Seventy-four De- 
serters and Their Families,” p. 10 (1905). 


320 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


In more insistent terms than ever before the demand came 
for some easily enforced law to procure from deserting 
husbands and fathers support for their wives and chil- 
dren. Societies appointed committees on wife desertion. 
Some, as the societies in New York State and in Denver, 
cooperated in securing more adequate legislation. 

The first attempt to collect and present data which 
should help toward a better understanding of this problem 
was made by the Associated Charities of Boston in Igo1, 
when Miss Zilpha D. Smith published a careful study 
of the two hundred and thirty-four deserted families 
which had been under the care of the society during the 
preceding year. In 1902 a special committee of the Phila- 
delphia Society for Organizing Charity made a study 
of two hundred and eleven cases of desertion and non- 
support under its care that year, which led to a dis- 
criminating classification of the types of deserters. In 
the following year a bill drafted by the Society became 
law. 

By 1903 the belief was so firmly rooted that something 
must be done to curb the evil that a conference on the 
subject was called by the New York Charity Organiza- 
tion Society, at which workers from Philadelphia, Buf- 
falo, Brooklyn, New York, and near-by New Jersey towns 
exchanged opinions as to causes and remedies. As a 
result of this conference interest was further stimulated 
in many parts of the country, and resolutions were 
adopted the next week at the National Conference of 
Charities and Correction, petitioning the governors of 
the various states to exercise their power of extradition 
in the case of deserting men whenever occasion offered. 


*The committee had, moreover, found that in two states there was 
no special law on the subject of desertion and non-support of wife and 
children, that there were sixteen states in which the only remedy for 
the wife was an application for divorce; ten in which a civil remedy 
was provided in the form of a judicial order against the husband to pay 
a certain sum for the support of his family; eighteen states in which 
desertion was a criminal offense, classed as a misdemeanor, and two in 
which it was classed as a felony. 


ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 32I 


Interest in studies of desertion and non-support did not 
cease with the conference called by the New York 
Society. In the same year this Society began a nation- 
wide inquiry into the problem. All the charity organiza- 
tion societies in the United States were invited to assist 
in gathering material by keeping special records of their 
cases of desertion during a year. As an outcome, an im- 
portant intensive study was published in 1905 of 574 
records of families which had been deserted by their 
male bread-winners.' 

In 1904 the Associated Charities of Washington, D. C., 
made an exhaustive study of the laws of the various states 
on family desertion and non-support.” It was believed 
wise to have available all laws on the subject, in order 
that the best features in them could be considered in 
framing any new law where changes had been found 
necessary. The study revealed among other things the 
fact that a misdemeanor, being a crime, was apparently 
covered by the United States law requiring extradition, 
but that there was something like an understanding 
among some of the states that extradition should not be 
asked or granted for trifling offenses, which family deser- 
tion was considered in some quarters. “But,” comments 
the author, ‘family desertion is not a trifling offense, 


*The study concludes that “desertion is not an evil which can be 
eradicated by legislation alone. A good law acts as a deterrent to a 
certain extent,” but “the chief value of a good law, well enforced, is 
that it expresses the estimation in which society holds men who shirk 
their obligations to their families, and that it relieves society of the 
necessity of assuming their responsibility. . . . Whatever can be done by 
legislation and wise treatment in other ways must be done, but the chief 
hope for the future lies in plans for eliminating the type of man which 
deserts and the type of woman which provokes desertion.” These plans 
consist “in the providing of decent living conditions, and fair opportuni- 
ties for work, and in the education of this generation of children and 
the next, and the next, and the next, in whatever makes for stability of 
character, for economic efficiency, for a realization of responsibility, and 
for a wholesome family life.” 

Lillian Brandt, “Five Hundred and Seventy-four Deserters and Their 
Families,” pp. 62-64 (1905). 

* The study was made by Mr. William H. Baldwin, one of the Board 
of Directors of the Society. 


322 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


and if the obligation to grant extradition in case of it 
was well understood by those who have occasion to ask 
for it, there is no doubt that many men might be brought 
back under present laws.” 1 Washington afterwards be- 
came one of the first cities to apply the work-house rem- 
edy to the problem. A law was passed in 1906 providing 
for the payment of fifty cents a day to the families of 
men under work-house sentence for non-support. The 
man is usually put on probation and has to pay a certain 
proportion of his wages to his family. Confirmed offend- 
ers are sent to the work-house, where they really have 
to work, and fifty cents a day from the proceeds of their 
labor is paid to their families. In one year there were 
899 non-support cases. Of these 608 were placed on 
probation and paid through the police $38,319.65 to their 
families, while the payments to families for the labor of 
men in the work-house amounted to $2,340.” 

A step of unusual promise in handling the problem was 
taken in 1911 by the United Hebrew Charities of New 
York City, when it created the National Desertion 
Bureau, whose efforts at bringing back deserting husbands 
are nation-wide. On starting the work the Bureau got 
back 174 deserters out of 249. Asa result of this demon- 
stration, New York City established, in 1913, a Bureau 
of Domestic Relations under the Department of Char- 
ities with the object of saving the city some of the money 
being spent in supporting children of deserters, and the 
year following, the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities began 
a similar plan whereby charity organization societies 
might cooperate in tracing and bringing back deserters. 
It should be recalled that special courts for dealing with 
cases of desertion and non-support are of recent date, 
the first in the country being established in New York 
City so recently as rg1o. 


William H. Baldwin, “Family Desertion and Non-Support Laws,” 


p. 38 (1904). 
*See Judge William H. De Lacey, “Family Desertion and Non- 


Support,” The Survey, Vol, XXIII, pp. 678-680 (1910). 


ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 323 


Realizing that the effective handling of desertion 
cases requires a special knowledge of law and experience 
in court procedure, which the average district visitor 
does not possess, and which she can seldom take the 
time to acquire in view of the many other demands upon 
her, the New York Association for Improving the Con- 
dition of the Poor in 1914 selected two visitors especially 
qualified for such work to take charge of all applications 
where desertion was given as a cause of the families’ need 
for assistance. Commenting editorially on the plan, The 
Survey said,! ‘There are several advantages in thus spe- 
Cializing in family rehabilitation and relief in the larger 
cities. Visitors become skilled in determining whether 
the man has really deserted or is simply taking a brief 
vacation, sometimes in connivance with the wife, in order 
that relief may be more readily forthcoming for the chil- 
dren. Decision as to the necessity and legitimacy of giv- 
ing relief to the family can be more quickly reached. The 
plan described has meant quicker and more adequate 
relief in some cases, and a saving in others, where giving 
material relief would have meant simply the encouraging 
and perpetuating of shiftless, unwholesome home condi- 
tions. ... . A visitor especially trained for this work can 
give to the worried, distressed woman at once informa- 
tion she needs, and in addition, through acquaintance with 
court procedure, enable her to present her case adequately 
to the court.” 


CHANGED ATTITUDE TOWARD RELIEF-GIVING 


Beginning with the latter half of the nineties the prac- 
tice of charity organization societies in the matter of 
relief-giving showed a marked change. Although it could 
be said that in 1895 a majority of societies both in num- 
bers and influence maintained the principle of having no 


*The Survey, Vol. X XXIII, p. 322 (1914). 


324 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


general fund for material relief, an investigation,’ made 
in 1901, showed that of seventy-five societies, all but six 
provided immediate relief in urgent cases from funds, 
either emergency or general, in the hands of their agents. 
By the close of the period, 1896-1904, about one-half 
the charity organization societies of the country gave re- 
lief from their own funds for all cases, emergent and 
otherwise. The society founded in Atlanta in 1905 
seems to have been the last charity organization society 
to be launched on a platform of no relief fund of any 
kind. It should not be inferred that in some quarters 
there was not stout opposition to any compromise with 
the principle that a charity organization society must ever. 
be a non-relieving society. In practice many societies 
in the earlier days had failed to live up to this principle, 
but such a course was confessed with special reasons and 
apologies. From the time under review the theory as 
well as the practice of the majority of societies indicated 
a belief that the direct administration of relief by a char- 
ity organization society is not incompatible with good 
family social work. 

The reasons for this change of position seem clear. 
If in a community where a charity organization so- 
ciety was organized, no relief agencies existed or none 
adequate for the needs, there was no practical course 
but for the new society to grant relief when needed from 
its own funds. In some communities the status of public 
education in matters of relief-giving seemed to require 
any society asking public support to justify its existence 
in quite concrete, tangible and immediate ways. Prob- 
ably the biggest single factor bringing about the changed 
practice was the increasing importance attaching to ma- 
terial relief when adequate and skilfully administered. It 
was held that fear of material relief becoming a crutch 
upon which the worker would lean to the detriment of 


* Charles M. Hubbard, “Relation of C. O. S. to Relief Societies and 
Relief-giving,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. VI, p. 783 (1901). 


ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 325 


thorough-going case work was a confession of the failure 
of professional service. A well-trained worker will ‘“un- 
derstand the subordinate part which relief must take in 
the work of restoring a needy family to normal conditions, 
and will not neglect the more arduous lines of effort. 
Without the high standard of service no degree of division 
of functions will result in successful restorative work.” } 

During the period under review, material relief 
acquired a new dignity. The type of ‘adequate 
relief’ which became the ideal of charity organization 
societies at the time ‘‘would have been heresy twenty- 
five years ago” wrote Mr. deForest, “if by adequate 
was meant, as is meant to-day, material aid as well as 
service.” * The new conception of adequacy in relief 
was the direct result, in part at least, of the movements 
for the prevention of poverty which characterized the 
period. The importance of a protected childhood, of good 
housing, of public health, in short, of the environmental 
causes of poverty, increased the amount of material relief 
needed in all case work laying claim to adequacy. 


CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETIES AND THE RELIEF 
ASSOCIATIONS 


If charity organization societies had had difficulties dur- 
ing the eighties with the old relief associations which had 
preceded them by thirty or forty years, by the new 
century their differences had largely been composed. In 
some places this was accomplished by such satis- 
factory codperation between the two local organiza- 
tions as to cayse them to function almost as a unit. 
This was notably true in Boston where the Associated 
Charities still adhered to its no-relief fund policy, de- 
pending upon the Boston Provident Association and other 


* Anon., Charities, Vol. IX, p. 17 (1902). 
7 Robert W. deForest, “Twenty-five Years and After,’ Charities and 
the Commons, Vol. XIX, p. 1131 (1908). 


326 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


relief-giving agencies and the benevolent individual for 
all the material relief needed in the care of its families. 
In Philadelphia the various relief agencies have continued 
to exist as separate agencies even though the local Society 
for Organizing Charity grants relief from its own funds. 
However, a spirit of marked codperation obtains. In 
St. Louis the need for a second type of society was met 
by the local Provident Association becoming in deed, if 
not in name, a charity organization society. 

Though entire codperation marks the relationship be- 
tween the Association for Improving the Condition of 
the Poor and the Charity Organization Society of New 
York City, a merger of these two has never been effected, 
apparently for historical and personal reasons.’ In 1902 
the two organizations formed a working agreement that 
has been permanent. They maintain jointly an applica- 
tion bureau which has special responsibility for homeless 
men. In the departments of the respective societies 
whose concern is with the improving of social conditions, 
a definite effort has been made to avoid all duplication 
of effort. Though all overlapping of relief is avoided 
through the use of a Social Service Exchange, it neverthe- 
less remains true that in the field of family case work, 
New York City has to-day two organizations with similar 
functions, each operating through district divisions cov- 
ering the entire city.” 

A more happy solution was found in Baltimore. From 
a situation in which the Charity Organization Society and 
the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor 
were working in the main through different district cen- 


*See Robert W. deForest, “The Federation of Organized Charities,” 
Charities, Vol. XII, pp. 21-22 (1904). 

* The Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor by the 
adoption of modern methods of case work has become in all but name 
a charity organization society. In the later nineties the A. I. C. P., as it 
is usually called, discontinued relief for cases in charge of the “C. O. S.,” 
thereby requiring the latter to raise relief for all its families, which 
was made possible by a change in its constitution permitting the raising 
of relief as the individual need for the same arose. 


ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 327 


ters with separate registration and application bureaus, 
each employing a different system of record histories and 


treatment cards, and each organization holding separate 


annual meetings, there came about a federation of the 
work of the two societies whereby there were joint meet- 
ings of agents, joint registration of families, joint dis- 
tricts and, above all, a common secretary. Families com- 


_ing to the joint bureaus were assigned so that the Charity 


Organization Society continued to seek out the material 
sources of relief, but where such sources were lacking and 


in the treatment of emergent and temporary needs, the 


resources of the Association for Improving the Condition 
of the Poor were drawn upon. It was only a matter of 


-time when the work of the two societies had become so 


much a unit that it required but a change in name to 
complete the union.* 

In many ways the experience of Baltimore was dupli- 
cated in Chicago. By 1904 it was obvious to all con- 
cerned that the work of the Chicago Bureau of Charities 
and the Chicago Relief and Aid Society had gradually 
begun to overlap. Under a secretary trained in the meth- 
ods of modern charity,” the Relief and Aid Society had 
adopted charity organization principles. The Bureau 
of Charities, on the other hand, had abandoned its posi- 
tion of being an organizing body only, and the way was 
thus paved for a consolidation of the two organizations 
which was effected in 1909, after one previous attempt.* 
The consolidation apparently appealed to the imagination 
and business judgment of the public. The United Char- 


*The combined organization became the Federated Charities of Bal- 
timore. 

* Sherman C. Kinsley. 

*The Relief and Aid Society had before this all the earmarks of a 
defunct organization. They advertised, for example, that all money 
received went into relief and none for salaries. 

*It was finally accomplishing by the boards of both organizations 
resigning and the appointment of a new one, representing both groups. 


_ The success of the plan was, however, due in the main to the efforts of 


Mr. Ernest P. Bicknell, General Secretary of the Chicago Bureau of 
Charities and his successor, Mr. Alexander M. Wilson, and Mr. Sherman 
C. Kingsley, secretary of the Relief and Aid Society. 


328 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


ities,! the new organization, gained more publicity in its 
first year of existence than the two societies which it 
replaced had enjoyed jointly in the six years preceding. 
One year’s contributions to the two societies for their 
last calendar year totaled $82,946. The United Charities 
raised a budget of $138,828 its first year—an increase of 
$55,982.00. 

During this period a movement toward federation was 
also in process in Kansas City, Mo., where a relief so- 
ciety had existed since 1880.2 It had unfortunately 
emphasized the fact that it was a business man’s organi- 
zation, to save them both time and money, work-tests in 
the form of woodyard and laundry being a conspicuous 
part of the machinery of administration. During the. 
latter half of the nineties, a Friendly Visitors’ Class had 
been organized and relief had been made more adequate, 
but the need for work of a more constructive kind, such 
as had been done in a number of cities whose charity had 
longer been organized, led to the launching in 1899 of 
an Associated Charities. A differentiation of function 
and cooperation solved for a time the problem of 
relationship between the old and new organization. 
The Associated Charities maintained no relief fund, 
while the Provident Association turned over to it the 
investigation of its cases. The divided responsibility 
inevitable in such a plan led to so much criticism that, 
in 1903, the Boards of the two organizations decided 
to work under one management, though the Boards were 
to retain their identity. Friction, however, arose between 
the Boards over the question of raising money, and the 
public was confused by double solicitations. This led to 
an agreement to have but one joint appeal. There- 
upon, the treasurer of the Provident Association each 
month turned over to the Associated Charities its last 
month’s administrative expenses. This relationship con- 


*The name was later changed to The Family Welfare Association. 
*The Kansas City Provident Association. . 


_ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 329 


tinued until 1910, when Kansas City launched its Board 
of Public Welfare. 

Thus we have seen that in spite of any theoretic dis- 
tinction as to the natural division of work between an 
association for improving the condition of the poor and a 
charity organization society, if both exist in the same 
city,’ it had become increasingly apparent at the time 
of which we write, that the two movements separated in 
their origins by a generation, had gradually approached 
each other. The trained worker to be found in growing 
numbers in both types of organization was an important 
factor in the change. Each was steadfastly working for 
the discovery of the efficient principles of relief, whether 
those principles are applied by one agency or another, 
whether they are held by a group of people who call them- 
selves by one name or by different and possibly histori- 
cally antagonistic groups. 


THE PERIOD (1896-1904) IN RETROSPECT 


Although there was marked emphasis on the value of 
trained service, charity organization workers made little 
advance in technique during the years just surveyed, 
except possibly in a more intelligent use of material re- 
lief. At least there was a growing appreciation of its 
importance. Some progress there was in understanding 
and meeting certain types of ever recurrent case prob- 
lems as presented by the homeless, the deserter and the 
vagrant. Charity organization societies have never lost 


*See Edward T. PDevine, “Principles of Relief,’ pp. 354-356 (1904). 

?Mr. Francis H. McLean stated in 1906, after studying 120 case rec- 
ords of some fifty to sixty of the older societies, that they showed 
that they must work up t6 “real investigation.” Even in the strongest 
societies there had been a lamentable lack of efficiency and thoroughness 
in this direction. In some cases, treatment had started with practically 
no investigation. In other cases there had been a prolonged investi- 
gation of a stereotyped character which led nowhere. In only a few 
was there clear-cut investigation, not either too long or too short, fol- 
lowed by treatment which was just as clear cut. See ‘Twenty-five 
Years and After,” Charities and the Commons, Vol. XIX, p. 1142 (1911). 


330 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


sight of the individual of flesh and blood to be helped. 
To apply to his particular needs even the best treatment 
that years of experience may have taught began, how- 
ever, to be viewed as “‘but the A B C of Charity,” 4 it be- 
ing increasingly felt that until the causes of poverty were 
discovered and removed, the burden would be greater 
than could be borne.” It is not, therefore, surprising 
that the outstanding characteristic of the period is the 
emphasis charity organization societies placed on the pre- 
vention of poverty, as reflected in the various move- 
ments to improve social conditions for which they often 
served as a matrix. Previous to this time charity organi- — 
zation workers had in practise “paid little attention to 
the general social conditions which lead to the creation, 
not so much of pauperism as of bitter, grinding pov- 
erty.” ° Striking at the roots of poverty had long been 
talked about; * even as early as the forties and fifties, 
antedating the charity organization movement, something 
had been done to awaken the public to the realization of 
certain social causes of poverty, but nation-wide cam- 
paigns for better housing, for the study and prevention 
of tuberculosis, for the abolition of child labor, in the 
inauguration of which charity organization societies 
played so important a part, mark a new epoch. 

The dominant note of the new period was a ‘“deter- 
mination to seek out and to strike effectively at those 
organized forces of evil, at those particular causes of de- 


*See the Twenty-second Annual Report of the Associated Charities 
of Washington, D. C. 

*See especially Albert O. Wright, “The New Philanthropy,” Proceed- 
ings, National Conference of Charities and Correction, 23d session, 
pp. I-12 (1896). 

* Alexander Johnson, “Organization in the Smaller Cities,” Charities, 
Vol. XIV, p. 714 (1905). See also Henry W. Farnam, “Twenty-fifth 
Anniversary at New Haven,” Charities, Vol. X, p. 259 (1903). 

*Many societies had long listed among their objects the study of the 
causes of pauperism and poverty. As early as 1883 the familiar parable 
of the Good Samaritan had been used in charity organization circles 
as illustrating the wisdom of preventive work, it being pointed out that 
real wisdom required driving the thieves from off the Jericho road 
rather than pouring on oil and wine after the offense. 







hy 


»-ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 331 


pendence and intolerable living conditions which are be- 
yond the control of the individuals whom they injure and 
whom they too often destroy.” + The hopeful belief was 
germinating, as we have seen, that poverty would largely 
take care of itself “if external conditions were made fairly 
tolerable, if children were not put at work prematurely, 
_but given the opportunity to play and to grow, if over- 
work were to cease, if exploitation of employees and pur- 
chasers were impossible, if sanitary homes were insured, 
if congestion of population were controlled, if prevent- 
-able diseases and accidents were prevented, if physical 
-needs were supplied, if orphans and neglected children 
and the aged and infirm were promptly placed in suitable 
foster boarding or cottage homes, if convalescents and 
_ such as suffer from chronic ailments were given the oppor- 
tunity to get well, to work at light and appropriate tasks 
or to remain without occupation, as their physical con- 
dition might require, if savings were safe, the schools 
provided an education, the police gave protection, the 
courts administered justice and the charities relief.” 2 
Less and less frequently one heard iterated and reiter- 
ated “the poor” “will be with us always. It is the utmost 
we can hope to do to reduce the number to the mini- 
mum.” ® More and more the phrase “the abolition of 
poverty” began to fire people’s enthusiasm. More and 
more it was held “that the problem of charity is only 
one part of the vast social problem, and is linked with 
almost every other part of it, so that to do one thing 


*Edward T. Devine, “The Dominant Note of Modern Philanthropy,” 
Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correction, 33d An- 
nual Session, p. 3 (1906). ‘“‘Nothing has done so much to reveal the 
fallacy of the well-worn dictum that for large classes of persons economic 
want is inevitable 4s the cumulative evidence that of those who seek 
relief from charitable agencies, many have been brought to that condition 
by the inadequate wages paid in industries in which they have toiled.” 
Jacob H. Hollander, “Preventive Charity,’ The Monthly Register, Vol. 
XX, p. 47 (1899). 

4Edward T. Devine, “Social Forces,’ Charities, Vol. XIX, p. 947 
(1907-1908). See also James M. Pullman, “The Development of Charity 
Organization,” Lend-a-Hand, Vol. VI, p. 425 (1893). 

“Working Women and Their Wages,” The Monthly Register, Vol. 
VIII, p. 77 (1887). 





332 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


well, we are compelled to at least touch upon a hundred 
other things.” + An interesting reflection of this change 
in emphasis is to be seen in the abandoning of the use 
of the word “deserving” in reference to C. O. S. 
cases.2, When one appreciates the difference in mental 
attitude of the social worker of to-day whose vocabulary 
still retains this word from that of one who has discarded 
it, or never acquired it, the significance of the abandon- 
ment of the term by charity organizatiunists can be ap- 
preciated. ‘In nothing,’ wrote Miss Richmond in Igor 
in discussing changes in charitable practices, “does the 
change seem so marked as in our willingness to cooperate 
with the poor themselves, and with their neighbors.” * 
The change is also reflected in the classification of the 
causes of poverty which, beginning with the period under 
review, place increasing emphasis on causes that may be 
viewed as essentially social.* 

The reasons for the shift in emphasis are fairly ob- 
vious. No person who is interested in social progress can 
long be content to raise here and there an individual, 
while tens of thousands of individuals are needlessly be- 
ing pushed below the poverty line. As charity organiza- 
tion societies began to apply the scientific method to their 
records, they saw that there were social forces operating 
on many sides to breed poverty. There is nothing arti- 
ficial in the growth of the concept of prevention. Case- 


* Alexander Johnson, “The Great City of To-day,” Charities, Vol. 
MID. 24, (1004). 

*The New York Society amended its constitution in 1896, abandon- 
ing the use of the word “deserving in reference to cases.” 

*Mary E. Richmond, “Some Methods of Charitable Co-operation,” 
Charities, Vol. VII, p. 197 (1901). It may be urged by some in partial 
justification of the use of the term ‘‘deserving” by earlier workers that 
the type of family that remains in poverty when there is free land for 
the asking, and the types of poverty found under modern industrial 
conditions and an absence of available free land are quite different. 

*At the National Conference of Charities and Correction of 1899, 
the classification of twenty-two headings adopted by the Conference 
a decade earlier was revised so as to include two main headings, ‘“‘Causes 
within the family” (individual) and ‘“‘causes outside the family (social). 


ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 333 


work, intelligently done, naturally leads on to preven- 
tion. 

In short, philanthropy had passed through the same 
stages as the other sciences of which medicine is illustra- 
tive—kind impulses, obvious relief, traditional experience, 
accurate records, comparison of treatment, accepted prin- 
ciples, systematic diagnosis, the abolition of certain dis- 
eases, the control of others, hygiene and prevention. 

A direct cause of the shift in emphasis was the addi- 
tion to the leadership of the movement of a group of 
younger men and women whose faith was kindled by the 
“heretica! doctrine that the depraved man is not the nat- 
ural man, for in him the natural is suppressed beneath a 
crushing load of misfortunes, superstitions and ill-fitting 
social conventions.” ” 

It was during the later nineties that the numbers of 
men and women employed by charitable societies, who 
considered their work a profession as other men regarded 
journalism, law, theology or medicine, steadily began to 
increase.* The day had passed when any one was con-. 
sidered capable of readjusting the family affairs of oth- 
ers.* The belief seems to have been crystallizing that the 


*A striking illustration of this truth is The League for Preventive 
Work, a cooperative organization formed in 1915 by nineteen repre- 
sentative agencies of Boston doing social and medical work among 
families. The League has done some notable work at interpretation 
of the facts and experiences gained in social case work by a group of 
high-grade agencies. 

*Simon N. Patten, “The New Basis of Civilization,” p. 205 (1907). 

*The remarks here made are not intended to make too sweeping a 
contrast between those in the ranks of the movement in the eighties and 
nineties. Many of the pioneers who bore the heat of the day continued 
to aid the movement most worthily during the period just surveyed. 

*Among the salaried employees of charitable societies, Mr. Homer 
Folks found in 1893 three tolerably distinct types which he charac- 
terizes in the following language: ‘The first was the man considerably 
past middle age, who had outlived his usefulness in any other line, 
and who, by reason of his unusual goodness, was supposed to be an 
acceptable alms distributor. In the second type, the great excellency 
lay in clerical ability; work for a charitable agency was the same as 
work for a dry-goods firm, a grain warehouse, or a street-cleaning 
department, except that the wages were somewhat less. The third 


334 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


success of the charity organization movement depended 
almost solely upon the possibility of securing enough peo- 
ple for the responsible administrative positions who added 
to knowledge, wisdom, and who combined with right 
theory, some experience. 

The turning of college men and women to social worm 
as a profession was doubtless due in part at least, to the 
increasing interest of colleges and universities in social 
problems.!. The teaching of Richard T. Ely, then of 
Johns Hopkins University, had already in the eighties 
been a big factor in turning the face of Amos G. 
Warner toward the work of charity organization. 
Mention should also be made of the influence of Francis 
G. Peabody at Harvard University, of Frank Sanborn 
at Cornell University, and S. N. Patten at the University 
of Pennsylvania.” 

These younger men and women shared the “growing 
belief that human society is an organism, under a law of 
development, and subject to conditions of health and dis- 
ease which can be ascertained, and, in large measure at 
least, controlled.” * The spirit of laissez faire in which 
the movement had been born had passed. The new 
knowledge of heredity, holding that acquired character- 


type differed from the other two in that the man considered the work 
a profession, as other men regarded journalism, law, theology or medi- 
cine. He entered the work because it was to him the most inviting 
field of service. At that time those who belonged to the third class 
commonly had no preparation especially designed to fit them for their 
work. Amos G. Warner, “American Charities’ (Rev. Ed.), pp. 462, 
463 (1908). See also Jeffrey R. Brackett, “Supervision and Education 
in Charity,” p. 179 (1903). 

* Professionalism in charity may be said to have had its beginnings 
when a standard of qualifications was set up governing the selection 
of paid workers. 

*In the period under review, Dr. Edward T. Devine became head 
of the New York Charity Organization Society and soon introduced 
into the philosophy of the movement many of the concepts and ideals 
of the classroom of Professor Patten. See also Robert W. Bruere, “The — 
eee Samaritan, Incorporated,” Harper's Monthly Magazine, CXX, p. 
836 (1910). 

*James M. Pullman, “The Churches in Charity Work,” Proceedings, 
irate Conference of Charities and Correction, 25th session, p. 486 

1898). 


“ERA OF MOVEMENTS FOR PREVENTION OF POVERTY 335 


istics are not inherited, afforded a biologic basis for the 
“New View,’ since it means that the great majority 
of individuals begin life with a greater degree of equality 
than had ever before been realized. The optimism in- 
herent in this new attitude was further increased by the 
presence of such vast wealth that could be turned into 
social and charitable channels, as the past knew nothing 
of. It began to be realized as never before that nature 
is generous, not niggardly. The taxing power of the state, 
and voluntary philanthropy were seen to be able to raise 
large sums for the general welfare without inflicting hard- 
ships on any. 

Moreover, a general social consciousness was awaken- 
ing. Women’s clubs throughout the nation as never be- 
fore were discussing social problems.2, A marked char- 
acteristic of the time was the increased social activities 
of the churches.* It was about this time that the Na- 
tional Consumers’ League was organized,‘ “‘the very first 
of a series of new movements which are all characterized 
by their emphasis upon the word prevention—the preven- 
tion, that is, of the preventable causes of poverty.” ° 

As a result of the general advance in social thinking 
just noted, the interests of the patrons of charity organiza- 
tion societies had changed. It was but natural that the 
societies themselves, to catch the public eye, should 
have reflected the change. The need of meeting the 
criticism of doing little to remedy the general conditions 


*The title of a leaflet by Edward T. Devine having wide circulation 
in charity organization circles, which stressed the importance of en- 
vironment as a cause of poverty. 

“Out of 1200 clups responding to inquiries sent out by the United 
States Government, 431 said that practical work was being done in 
one or more of those subjects. Bulletin U. S. Bureau of Labor, July, 
1890. 

* Joseph Lee, “Preventive Work,” Charities, Vol. VII, p. 37 (1901). 

“Josephine Shaw Lowell, founder of the New York Charity Organi- 
zation Society, assisted in the formation of the League and became its 
first President. 

*Mary E. Richmond, “The Inter-Relation of Social Movements,” 
pamphlet published by the American Unitarian Association, Bulletin 
INO. 17, P. 3. 


336 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


which produce poverty, spurred more than one society to 
broaden its work to include these preventive movements. 
Moreover, as has been pointed out, the field of social 
work was still relatively undifferentiated. These newer 
movements would have waited long in many communi- 
ties, had they not been taken under the fostering care 
of the local charity organization society, either as a part 
of its own immediate work or as a separate association 
whose personnel was largely identified with the local 
society. 

Although the period just reviewed was marked 
by great interest in such preventive movements as housing 
and public health, there were not lacking those who 
sounded a note of warning against an expansion that 
might draw upon the energy needed for good social case 
work. This “special field” of charity organization socie- 
ties, it was pointed out, “calls for hard and persistent 
effort in lines that are easily slighted, and a society’s 
lapse from the standard is not vindicated by its assump- 
tion of other functions.” 1 It is the improvement in the 
technique of the day’s work. that characterizes the next 
stage of the history of the movement. It should not, 
however, be inferred thereby that interest in preventive 
work by any means ceased or even lessened with the 
close of the period just surveyed. Other hands were ready 
to take hold. The field of social work had become the dif- 
ferentiated and specialized one of to-day. 


*D. I. G., “Needy Families in Their Homes,” Charities, Vol. IX, p. 19 
(1902). 


fre EER EX 
THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 


[1905-1921] 


By 1905 the movement for organizing charity in Amer- 
ica stood upon the threshold of a national phase of de- 
velopment. Growth up to this time had been more or 
less spasmodic. No one can, however, study the rise 
and earlier development of the movement without ap- 
preciating the extent and power of the missionary spirit 
of its leaders.1 Their efforts, however, were largely un- 
organized until the Charities Publication Committee of 
the Charity Organization Society of the city of New York, 
initiated in 1905 a Field Department of Charities and 
the Commons, through which the charity organization 
societies of the country could codperate in a national 
plan for spreading the principles and methods of charity 
organization. 

This step was not taken suddenly. As early as 1897 
it had been pointed out in several quarters that if a char- 
ity organizationist had a good thing, he should intelli- 
gently offer it to others, that his “principles” should not 
be left to spontaneous propagation but should consistently 
be advanced until every city and town was in harmonious 
cooperation, using methods as uniform as the different 
local conditions would permit. In the words of the Com- 
mittee on the Organization of Charity, reporting at the 
National Conference of Charities and Correction that 


*The journey of Dr. Daniel C. Gilman and Mr. John M. Glenn of 
Baltimore, and of Mr. Robert Treat Paine, Jr., of Boston, to New 
Orleans in 1897 to aid in the launching of a new society is illustrative. 


337 


338 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


year, the time was “ripe for an organized effort to plant 
the approved modern methods of charitable administra- 
tion, public, private and personal, throughout the entire 
country.” “Such a missionary movement should be 
pushed by an organized executive force dedicated to that 
purpose,” the report continued.’ Six years later at the 
National Conference of Charities and Correction held at 
Atlanta, Georgia (1903), it had been clearly recognized 
that the question as to “whether the extension of sys- 
tematic and intelligent methods of public and private 
charitable administration should be by design or left to 
mere accident,” was ‘‘a problem soon to be faced and 
settled.” * A beginning of the solution of this problem 
was made in 1905 with the establishment of the Field 
Department, to which reference has just been made.? 

The missionary field before the new department was 
large. The vast majority of existent societies were to be 
found along the northern half of the Atlantic seaboard. 
South of the Great Lakes to the Mason and Dixon Line, 
societies were to be found in less numbers, but beyond 
to the Pacific and below to the Gulf there were only a 
few stragglers. Furthermore, there were, in all sections, 
cities which, though recently but towns, had many of the 
social problems of the older cities without realizing their 
significance. Their development in material wealth had 
outrun their development in social legislation and in in- 
stitutions of culture. There was also a host of smaller 
communities of 60,000, and under, in which charity was 
still chaotic and unorganized. In all, there were approxi- 
mately 360 communities with population ranging from 
10,000 to 60,000, and 415 additional incorporated places 
with a population between 5,000 and 60,000, making a 


*Proceedings, National Conference of Charities and Correction, 24th 
session, p. 142 (1897). 

* Alfred O. Crozier, “The Expansion of Organized Charity,” Chari- 
ties, Vol. X, p. 575 (1903). 

*In 1891 the London Society had formed a provincial sub-committee 
with an annual conference which aimed to serve the same purpose as 
the Field Department referred to above. . 





THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 339 


total of 775 cities and towns, with but 79 societies for 


organizing charity among them.' Charity organization 
had hitherto been most successful in the great cities, 
partly because the need for it was less in smaller places 
or at least less obvious, but largely because it was less 
difficult to secure the services of an experienced worker 
and support of the work in the larger and wealthier cen- 
ters of population. 

Not many years before the period under discussion, it 
was generally believed that it was hardly desirable to 
create a charity organization society in a community with 
less than 40,000 inhabitants. At the time of the inaugura- 
tion of the missionary movement in 1905, the requisite 
sized unit of population was believed to be 20,000, while 
to-day it is 5,000 or even less. Hardly any community is 
now considered too small to organize its charitable re- 
sources even when to do so it becomes necessary to share 
with another community or with a whole county the 
services of a paid professional worker. 

Even in the larger centers the field of work before 
the new department was considerable. On the basis of 
the Census of 1910 there were still 45 cities with 
populations of 25,000 to 100,000, either without so- 
Cieties or with mere shells of organizations. Many 
existing societies were organized wrongly ? and demanded 
aid in reorganization, some societies were facing crises 
and needed support, while still other societies required 
aid in improving their standards of work ® or in developing 

*A. W. McDougal, ‘How Should the Treatment of Needy Families be 
Organized in Cities of Less than Sixty Thousand Inhabitants?” Chari- 
mes, Vol. IX, p. 333 (1902). 

*There still persisted in many places a very old and utterly vicious 
form of organization based upon the division of a town into districts 
and the selection of one or more ladies to make volunteer investigations 
and carry out all the family treatment required. Francis H. McLean, 
“Organized Charity,’ Charities and the Commons, Vol. XXI, p. 312 
4 Ae ‘recently as 1907 the Associated Charities of Knoxville had no 
competent person for general secretary, investigating being done by a 


police matron and police officer in plain clothes. Even more recently 
the local society of a city in the northwest had been manned by an 


340 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


their community programs. High grade family work 
rests ultimately upon an educated public opinion, a mat- 
ter of comparatively slow growth in all technical fields. 

One of the first services undertaken by the Field De- 
partment was the establishment of an Exchange Bureau, 
a clearing house for the interchange of all blanks and lit- 
erature issued by the constituent members.’ 

In 1907 the Field Department began issuing a monthly 
bulletin as a special means of communication among 
the various societies throughout the country. Each issue 
contained articles by the national leaders in the move- 
ment on such technical questions as “interviewing,” “‘the 
use of sources of information” and the “art of case re- 
cording jis: 


CHARITY ORGANIZATION EXTENSION 


Besides continuing to publish studies on the technique 
of case work and to act as a clearing house of informa- 
tion among societies already in existence, the Field De- 
partment took steps in 1907 to carry out one of its orig- 
inal purposes by engaging a field secretary * to aid com- 


ex-policeman, who spurned the idea that there was anything he could 
learn of the technique of case work, while in a southern city of some 
prominence the work was in charge of an ex-school teacher who had 
spent many years in the service and who, though respected in the com- 
munity, proved the chief obstacle to most of the progressive move- 
ments in her city. In ,many places the force of trained workers was 
pitifully inadequate. 

*At the National Conference of Charities and Correction held at 
Portland, Oregon, in 1905, the general secretaries of some of the charity 
organization societies had agreed to exchange form letters and printed 
matter each month through some central agency. This developed into 
the Exchange Bureau. 

? The plan was proposed at the National Conference of Charities and 
Correction of 1907. As one of the main purposes of the bulletin was 
the discussion of technical problems connected with professional work of 
charity organization societies, the bulletins were circulated among charity 
organization societies only. At the beginning there were but sixteen co- 
operating societies and the bulletins were multigraphed. By 1908 the 
number of codperating societies had increased and the bulletins were 
printed but not published. 

*Mr. Francis H. McLean, who had been Associate Editor of the 
Field Department of the Survey since 1906, when he was Superintendent 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 341 


munities wishing to launch charity organization societies 
and to help out of its difficulties any society that had 
wandered from the path of scientific charity. The need 
for this work is attested by the fact that the field 
secretary was soon overwhelmed with opportunities for 
usefulness.1_ Between December, 1907, and December, 
1900, he visited thirty-nine cities, in sixteen of which or- 
ganization or reorganization was fully accomplished by 
the latter date. This does not include the organizing 
work aided by correspondence and by the visits of the’ 
associate field secretary in fifteen places. In nearly every 
instance these thirty-one cities and towns were induced 
to employ a trained secretary and often trebled their orig- 
inal budget. 
Under the Field Department in 1909 a system of For- 
warding Centers was established, through which societies 
might secure investigation in places of over 5,000 in 
which there were no charity organization societies. 
Later’ by consent of the Forwarding Centers themselves, 
the service was extended to include any place with a post- 
office within the territory mentioned. 


THE PITTSBURGH ASSOCIATED CHARITIES 


Among the thirty-one communities just mentioned, 
Pittsburgh deserves special mention, not merely because 
it was the last of the metropolitan cities to found a charity 
Organization society, but because it was in connection 
with it, that a Central Council of Social Agencies, a plan 
for correlating the activities of all the agencies of a city, 
was first tried. 

Unlike all the older cities which had had their general 
of the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities. At the National Conference 
of Charities and Correction of that year, he had outlined a plan of 
field work calling for the services of a traveling secretary. During the 
next twelve months he had devoted his spare hours to correspondence 
with cities seeking advice about the organization or reorganization of 


their local charitable work. 
*No visits were paid without invitation from those locally interested. 


342 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


family welfare societies long before the present host 
of special social agencies came into etistence, 1908 found 
Pittsburgh with almost all these activities but with ne 
charity organization society. The Associated Charities 
of Pittsburgh, as it was called, began literally as an asso- 
ciation of charities. Within approximately a year’s time 
of its founding, forty-four of the leading social 
agencies of the city had joined, each contributing ten 
dollars or more, and appointing a delegate to a Central 
‘ Council of Social Agencies. 

In organizing its district plan of work the Pittsburgh 
association followed the Chicago idea which had proven 
so successful in developing able leaders in the various dis- 
tricts.1_ In addition to the strong district committee of 
the Ohio Valley District, there were soon in operation 
other conferences which met weekly. In spite of the 
fact that the Pittsburgh society proceeded slowly in laying 
its plans, that it stood ready to take its part in the en- 
couragement of broad social reforms and to become the 
coordinating servant of the social forces of the commun- 
ity; in spite of the fact that the organization was put into 
the hands of social workers who had already won their 
spurs in other communities, and who had in the beginning 
of their work made much progress in registration work 
and in the development of cooperation,? the work in 
Pittsburgh was early destined to a set-back from which 
the society needed several years to recover. Many of the 
older social agencies of the city had viewed the movement 
for an Associated Charities with favor, some, however, 
with disfavor. The forces of opposition which for ten 
years prevented the organization of such a society, reas- 


*In Chicago each district manages its own affairs except finances. 
There is, however, a conference of districts under a general district sec- 
retary. 

By March, 1909, nineteen organizations, including among them the 
most important agencies in the city, were regularly reporting to the 
Registration Bureau. 

>See Anon., “Charles F. Weller Goes to Pittsburgh,” Charities and 
the Commons, Vol. XX, p. 393 (1908). 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 343 


serted themselves once it was started and so made thor- 


ough going cooperation difficult. Part of the temporary 


set-back seems to have been due also to the form of or- 


ganization of the Associated Charities. So much em- 
phasis was placed on the fact that the new association 
was a Clearing-house for the 120 members who consti- 
tuted the Central Council (which Council in turn named 
ten of the twenty-one trustees of the Associated Charities ) 
that the community viewed it more in the nature of 
a federation of charities than a society for organizing 
charity. Realizing that its purpose was the latter, the 
Associated Charities in 1912 amended its Constitu- 
tion. Among other changes, the Central Council 
was deprived of the right of naming ten trustees, and 
the Associated Charities became an independent member 
of the Central Council. Standing more squarely on its 


own feet it was subsequently able to develop a codpera- 
tion based on efficient case-work that compared favorably 


a aos 


with that obtaining in many communities with charity 
organization societies of long standing. Thus by slow 
but steady efforts the Associated Charities brought into 
a great city of 600,000 the ideals of thorough family 
case-work without which the work of all social agencies 
in the city had been handicapped.’ 


THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION DEPARTMENT OF THE 
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION 


The results achieved by the publication of Field 
Department Bulletins and by the field secretary and his 
assistant were so valuable and far-reaching that in Oc- 
tober, 1909, the Russell Sage Foundation established a 
Charity Organization Department” devoted to exten- 
sion work and kindred endeavors. The issuance of 


*See A. B. Fox, “Focussing the Lines of Social Contact,” The Survey, 
Vol. XXV, p. 1036 (1911). 

*Miss Mary E. Richmond became Director of the Department, which 
position she still occupies. In the Department Mr. Francis H. McLean 
and Miss Margaret F. Byington retained their old official titles and 
duties of Field and Assistant Field Secretary respectively. 


344 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


the Field Department Bulletins and the work in the field 
just described, therewith passed from the control of Chari- 
ties and the Commons to the new department of the 
Russell Sage Foundation, which assumed the further task 
of endeavoring to improve the work of persons already in 
the harness by supplying systematic family case-work in- 
struction in some of the schools of social work. This 
purpose took more definite shape in 1910 by the estab- 
lishment of a month’s Charity Organization Institute, 
which meets annually. Its object is to meet the problem 
of the charity organization worker who is already at 
work, but who seeks further opportunity for training.’ 

That a more logical organization for carrying on the 
extension activities than the Russell Sage Foundation, 
would be an association composed of all societies for or- 
ganizing charity was in the minds of a number of charity 
organization secretaries at the time that the Field De- 
partment of Charities and the Commons transferred its 
duties. to the Russell Sage Foundation. The time, how- 
ever, did not seem ripe for launching such a new nation- 
wide association. However, at the National Conference 
of Charities and Correction of that year (1909) the 
twenty-three charity organization societies which had been 
in the habit of exchanging forms monthly, selected a 
committee to consider the matter, which reported at the 
National Conference the year following, when a tempo- 
rary organization was effected. A year later (1911) it 
was decided that the time had arrived for the establish- 
ment of a permanent organization among the one hun- 
dred and twenty-nine societies of the country. A division 
of work and plan of codperation was adopted by the 
new National Association of Societies for Organizing 
Charity (with sixty Charity Organization Societies as 

*For several years the institute, now the Institute of Family Social 
Work, was held under the auspices of the New York School of Phil- 
eee ee In 1914 this relationship, which had been but nominal, was 


?It was known as the National Association of Societies for Organizing 
Charity. Frederic Almy became Secretary. 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 345 


charter members) and the Charity Organization Depart- 
ment whereby the former assumed the duties of extension 
work and the latter retained the tasks of research work 
based on case studies, the maintenance of a technical 
journal for the use of established societies and a short 
normal course for the further training of charity or- 
ganization workers. Thus, although many movements 
much less well known than that of charity organization 


have been nationalized after a few years’ growth, it was 


over three decades after the first charity organization 
society was founded that the movement achieved a truly 
national basis. 

That the need of the new association was great is at- 
tested by the fact that during its first eight months of 
existence no less than thirty-two cities had been definitely 
assisted in organization and twenty-nine were on the way. 
The association soon marked out a program of organiza- 
tion as fast as possible, in cities of 10,000 or over (there 
were about 500 alone of 10,000 population), and experi- 
mental organization in cities of less than 10,000, all ex- 
pansion to be regulated by adequately holding on to the 
ground already gained. As it was soon demonstrated that 
cities of 10,000 are able to pay for the full time of a 
trained worker, the field still uncultivated offered a 
challenge to any movement hoping to become truly 
national. That the time, moreover, was opportune for 
charity organization societies collectively to accept the 
obligation to carry on extension work is borne out by the 
fact that in three years time the Association included in 
its membership 142 societies in 140 cities scattered 
throughout 33 states in the United States and three 
provinces in Canada. This is all the more remarkable 
when it is recalled that charity organization membership 
in the Association was based on compliance with the four 
following stipulations: (1) A paid agent or secretary on 
full time (this provision does not apply to cities with a 
population of less than 10,000). (2) The use of indi- 


346 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


vidual records and the exchange of information. (3) Sign- 
ing the rules governing the issuance of transportation by 
charity societies and public officials as promulgated by 
the National Conference of Charities and Correction.* 
(4) An agreement to answer inquiries sent to it by socie- 
ties for organizing charity in other cities. 

Since its organization the Association with changing 
titles but the same spirit has carried on steadily its 
work of organization and reorganization of societies for 
family social work throughout the country and in the 
formation of Central Councils of Social Agencies, whereby 
all the agencies of a city correlate their activities and ren- 
der their efforts more effective. Staff members of the 
Association also make consultation visits to organization 
members which may have problems they wish to discuss 
on the spot. Certain phases of the Association’s work is 
carried on by committees of which the following are illus- 
trative: Committee on Salary Standards, the Committee 
on Recruiting and Training New Workers, and the Com- 
mittee on Marriage Laws and Their Administration in the 
several states. In 1919 the Association, which then had 
180 members,® launched the magazine The Family, as 
the national organ of the movement. 


*An agreement whereby signers contract not to ship applicants for 
relief from one city to another without investigation. 

*From the National Association of Societies for Organizing Charity 
it became the American Association of Societies for Organizing Charity 
in order to include Canadian members; then American Association for 
Organizing Charity in the interest of brevity and finally the American 
Association for Organizing Family Social Work as more descriptive of 
its true function. 

*These 180 societies met the following minimum requirements for 
eligibility to membership: 

(1) A paid worker on full time. 

(2) Individual case records. 

(3) Signing of the Transportation Code. 

(4) Agreement to answer inquiries and make investigations for 
Associated Charities in other cities. 

(5) A membership open to all in the community. 

There were (Jan., 1920) 300 societies in this country and 250 in 
foreign countries that met the following minimum standards: 

(1) A paid worker on fuil time (applying only to cities of over 10,000 
population). (2) Signing of the Transportation Code. (3) Agreement 
to answer inquiries from out-of-town agencies. 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 347 


THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MOVEMENT FOR ORGANIZING 
CHARITY IN THE SOUTH 


The first three years’ work of the Field Secretary of 
the Field Department, previously mentioned, were given 
to the South. The poverty of the South incident to the 
Civil War, followed by the rapid industrial strides that 
have characterized this section since the nineties, had not 
proven conducive to the development of a highly trained 
grade of professional social service. The South had by 
no means been uninterested in social movements prior to 
the advent of the charity organization movement. The 
child labor movement, the educational movement, and in 
some communities the anti-tuberculosis movement had 
preceded. Yet all these causes undoubtedly suffered 
because outside of the interested groups “there were 
not many inevitable points of contact beyond the 
propaganda work itself where the uninterested were 
being forced to realize the individual results of social 
forces.” 1 

The meeting of the National Conference of Charities 
and Correction in Atlanta in 1903, however, marked the 
beginning of a social awakening.? To-day movements for 
social welfare have caught the popular imagination to a 


*Francis H. McLean, ‘Memphis To-day,” The Survey, Vol. XXX, 
p. 565 (1913). 

*In 1897 a special meeting of the National Conference of Charities 
and Correction was held in New Orleans which had a great local 
influence. In the same year a charity organization society was formed 
in the city. Several leaders in the movement from Boston and Balti- 
more aided in its launching. It was founded on the principle of no 
relief from its own funds except in case of emergency. This society 
has never played any influential réle in the development of the move- 
ment throughout the South. Though there are to-day a number of 
Organizations in the South with the titles of Associated Charities or 
United Charities, which date their origin in the nineties and in some 
instances to the eighties, they were, prior to 1905, charity organization 
societies largely in name only. 


348 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


remarkable extent in many southern communities.’ This 
growing social interest gave birth, in 1912, to the Southern 
Sociological Congress, which meets annually to discuss, 
among other things, the problems of child welfare, pub- 
lic health, courts and prisons, charity organization, race 
relations and the Church and social service.” In 1916 
the first of the proposed extension conferences of the 
Congress was held in Columbia, S. C. By July of this 
same year only two southern states, Mississippi and 
Georgia were without their state conferences of Charities 
and Correction. 


THE ATLANTA ASSOCIATED CHARITIES 


This society merits special mention, since it was the 
pioneer of that growing number of societies in the South 
founded on “the new view of charity”—and employing 
the methods of the best of the societies in the North. The 
immediate occasion for its organization, in 1905, recalls 
the conditions and circumstances which gave birth a 
generation earlier to the pioneer societies of the North. 
An ice-storm of great severity paralyzing business for 
days resulted in an immense amount of suffering among 
the poor. The churches of the city and the existing 
charitable organizations were soon swamped by number- 
less calls for help. The newspapers made much of the 
situation. The citizens responded promptly and gen- 
erously. Subscriptions were opened in numerous places 
and in a short time a large amount of money was col- 


*As in the North, these social movements have in many instances 
been launched by newly founded societies for organizing charity as 
branches of their work. In other cases the connection has been un- 
official, the same group of interested persons standing back of each 
organization. 

“It was felt that there is a place for the Congress in addition to 
the National Conference of Charities and Correction, not because the 
problems of the South were peculiar but because a southern Congress 
would be more largely attended by Southern peoples interested than 
would the National Conference of Charities and Correction, except 
when that body met in a southern city. 


eer ls 


{ THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 349 


lected. With the return of normal times it became ap- 
‘parent to all that in handling the emergency there had 


been no method, no organization. Each church and each 
society had acted practically independently.of all others, 
and in many cases people in great need had gone un- 
helped, while in many others, applicants had received ten 
times as much food, fuel or clothing as they had really 
required, and had sold the surplus, using the money for 
whiskey or morphine. Several public-spirited citizens 
acquainted with the methods of charity organization were 
instrumental in launching, shortly thereafter, the Asso- 
ciated Charities. Atlanta was districted under paid sec- 
retaries, case conferences were organized and friendly 
visitors utilized. The new organization brought order out 
of chaos, and apparently from the beginning has enjoyed 
both the cooperation of the older charitable organizations 
and the confidence of the public. One element of success 
in gaining the good will of social agencies already in 
existence was a rigid adherence to the rule of furnishing 
no material relief from its own funds and so competing 
with none.t All money for relief was procured from 
other agencies or by individual subscriptions solicited 
especially for the respective cases as they arose.” Be- 
side the work with families in distress, the new asso- 
ciation soon made itself felt in the community at large. 
It started the local playground work, established a dis- 
pensary for the treatment of the poor suffering from 
tuberculosis, organizéd a ‘committee on physical welfare 


*Annual Report, Associated Charities of Atlanta, p. 10 (1906). 
As far as the author is aware this is the last society for organizing 
charity launched on a platform of no relief fund of any kind. 

2It soon became apparent that large sums would have to be raised. 
This led to the creation of a relief fund maintained separately from 
the General Fund. The deficit of the special fund grew until it was 
removed by transfers from the General Fund. Thus the “case by 
case” method finally evolved into the existence of a relief fund to 
which people contributed with no special case in view. As the evo- 
lution was gradual it did not arouse opposition at just the time when 
the new organization was working for the codperation of the other 
social agencies of the city. 


350 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


of school children” composed of representatives from 
practically all of the civic and philanthropic organizations 
of the city and conducted a class for the study of social 
problems. . 

The codperation which the society gained not only 
with other agencies’ but with the newspapers of the city, 
was soon second to none in the country.1 This was due 
apparently not alone to the broad community program 
for which the society stood, but also to education of the 
public through quiet, sympathetic, thorough case-work.? 

The awakening to the need of more efficient methods 
of charity soon spread to other parts of the South. 
In Richmond, Virginia, the belief was expressed that 
the chief need of the community in the field of social 
service was the securing of an adequately paid social 
worker ‘familiar with modern methods of charitable 
work in other cities, and capable of serving as a leader 
and organizer for the rapidly growing philanthropic ac- 
tivities of the city.” ? The Associated Charities of 
Raleigh, organized in 1903, ‘“‘to suppress street begging, to 
decrease uninformed almsgiving at the house doors, and 
to gather all general relief work of the community into a 
center of cooperative, intelligent administration,” * was 
beginning, by 1905, to give evidence of an increasingly 
intelligent interest in the problems of the poor and a 
promising sense of responsibility for the development of 
wise charitable work. The year 1906 saw the launching 
of societies for organizing charity in Richmond and in 
San Antonio, Texas. The year following Frankfort Ky., 
Augusta, Ga., Fort Worth, Tex., and Asheville, N. C., 

*This is evidenced by the tone of the public press and the absence 
of scare headline articles either exploiting the poverty of some so- 
called poor family or attacking “organized charity.” 

*This was not limited to Atlanta. The General Secretary was a 
member of the Field Department Committee. of Charities and The 
Commons. He gave freely of his time to spread the gospel of charity 
organization to surrounding towns in the state. 

* Charles F. Weller, “Charity and Social Development in Two South- 


ern Cities,’ Charities, Vol. XIII, p. 467 (1905). 
*Ibid., p. 467. 


’ inti 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT a 51 


_were added to the list of southern cities with charity 


organization societies. The year 1909 witnessed the ex- 
tension of the movement to no less than six additional 
Southern cities.! 


THE SociAL AWAKENING IN SAVANNAH 


In 1909 the National Tuberculosis Exhibit was 
brought to Savannah. At the same time an active group 
of women, under the name of the ““Committee on Charities 
and Health,” was organized to consider the best way of 
fighting the great white plague. It became increasingly 
apparent to this committee that tuberculosis is but one 
aspect of a large community problem which can be effec- 
tively met only by organized effort. Mr. Francis H. 
McLean, Field Secretary of the Charity Organization 
Department of the Russell Sage Foundation, came to 
Savannah at the request of the Committee and made 
several public addresses, by which the sympathy of busi- 
ness men, clergy and members of charitable organizations 
was enlisted. Through the courtesy of the Mayor and 
City Council, an office was obtained in the City Hall, 
the services of a trained social worker with twelve years’ 
experience were secured and the Associated Charities of 
Savannah was launched on a firm basis. Beside the work 
with individuals and families in distress in which the co- 


operation of a large group of societies of long standing 


was gradually secured, the new society early played an 
active part in the local campaign against tuberculosis, 
organizing a committee to study the prevention, relief and 
cure of the scourge, and to build a hospital for advanced 


cases. Believing one of its duties to be helping the pub- 


lic “to understand and practice sane, sympathetic and 
enlightened charity,” the secretary of the society spoke be- 
fore many groups in the community, including the colored 
people in the hope of later organizing a special committee 


*Staunton, Va.; Lynchburg, Va.; Wheeling, W. Va.; Savannah, 
Ga.; Columbus, Ga., and Pensacola, Fla. 


352 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


for work with negroes,' conducted a “‘case conference” in 
which family problems were selected for discussion 
because of their educational value, and instituted a train- 
ing class for social workers primarily designed for those 
working for the Associated Charities. 


THE BIRMINGHAM SOCIETY 


During 1910 the movement for organizing charity 
gained a foothold in three other important southern cities, 
Birmingham, Ala., Jacksonville, Fla., and Charlotte, N. C. 
Each illustrated the need of a charity organization society 
felt by a community awaking to its social responsibilities. — 
In Birmingham the local Children’s Aid Society, realizing 
the value of greater codperation among the social agencies 
of the city,” and believing that this could best be effected 
through the activities of an efficient charity organization 
society, had succeeded the year previous in having the 
Field Secretary of the Charity Organization Department 
of the Russell Sage Foundation address a number of 
public-spirited citizens of Birmingham. After a delay 
of almost a year, as the time did not seem propitious for 
launching the new organization, and a second visit from 
the Field Secretary, the Associated Charities of Birming- 
ham was organized. 

Five days after the new society had opened its doors a 
disaster in the mines of the Palos Coal & Coke Com- 
pany at Palos, Alabama, occurred, and eighty-nine lives 
were lost. Such calamities need the benefits of trained 
leadership and the methods which are known not only 
to preserve the spirit of independence in those who have 

*The feeling in Savannah and elsewhere in the South seemed to be 
to care for the needy white families first and gradually extend the 
work to the colored. This was sometimes justified by the low stand- 
ards of living generally obtaining among the latter. 

* There was already a relief society of long years’ standing parading 
as a charity organization society. Because of its failure to secure co- 
operation with the social agencies of the city, it often happened that 


the same person was found to be receiving aid from four or five dif- 
ferent organizations. 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 353 


suffered crushing losses but also to safeguard the money 
contributed. In this instance the Associated Charities 
was appealed to with the result that the Secretary of the 
society, a man with years of experience in the field, gave 
his services, formulating a pension plan of distribution of 
the fund raised by public subscription based on two 
months’ constant association with the proposed bene- 
ficiaries of the fund. 

Beside its customary work for families and individuals 
in need the new society soon began to play an important 
role in the field of public health. Its activities resulted 
in the establishment of the Committee for the Study and 
Prevention of Infant Mortality, launched under a sepa- 
rate Board of Directors. At the same time the new 
society joined in an effective campaign against tubercu- 
losis which soon crystallized in the formation of the 
Anti-Tuberculosis Association of Jefferson County, of 
which the General Secretary of the Associated Charities 
became secretary. 


THE JACKSONVILLE SOCIETY 


The second important foothold in the South gained 
during 1910 was in Jacksonville, Florida. During the 
winter of 1908-09 the Social Science Class of the Women’s 


Club of Jacksonville, a wide-awake organization of public- 


spirited women, had studied contemporaneous methods of 
dealing with dependengy and made a comprehensive sur- 
vey of local conditions. Investigation disclosed the fact 
that Jacksonville had no collected data, and that in deal- 
ing with dependents there was much duplication of effort, 
indiscriminate giving and haphazard, planless charity. 
To remedy the situation the club decided to arouse 
public opinion and found a charity organization society. 
In order that the methods to be adopted by the proposed 


*In 1907 the State Medical Association had induced the National 
Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis to send to 


Birmingham, Mobile and Alabama its Tuberculosis Exhibit. 


Pie ac 


354 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


society should be in harmony with the best thought of 
the day, the Field Secretary of the Charity Organization 
Department of the Russell Sage Foundation conferred 
in person on a plan of procedure. It was decided to 
postpone the formation of a charity organization society, 
but to form a Charity Council, composed of the repre- 
sentatives of the various philanthropic agencies of the 
city, which met monthly to discuss kindred problems. 
Before the year was out this council called a con- 
ference which resulted in the launching of a charity 
organization society. In addition to its work with 
families in distress, the new society almost imme- 
diately began a campaign against tuberculosis. With 
the aid of several organizations of the city, it employed 
a visiting nurse for all tubercular cases. The society 
also established as a demonstration a small camp near 
the city for men suffering with tuberculosis. Among its 
other activities were the formation of an effective legal 
aid committee, composed of local public-spirited attor- 
neys, and the operation of a travelers’ aid department. 
It was not long before it also helped to launch, through 
its knowledge of the histories of hundreds of families in 
the city, medical inspection of schools and two indus- 
trial schools. Through the activity of the Charity 
Council, which had fostered it, the new society enjoyed 
from the start hearty support from other social agencies, 
the city government and the public. The three members 
of the relief committee of the City Council became mem- 
bers of the board of directors of the Associated Charities, 
though not officially connected with it. As a result, the 
new society made all investigations for public outdoor 
relief for the city, with a saving of approximately $2,000 
a year. Through excellent codperation with the city 
police administration, street begging was greatly lessened. 
Chronic cases of begging were sent to the workhouse. 
Through the confidence already gained, the Associated 
Charities found it possible to persuade the Mayor of 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 355 


the city to refuse a permit for the solicitation of funds for 
a rescue home the leaders of which were soon proven to be 
a group of self-seekers. Probably the greatest contribu- 
tion of the Associated Charities came as standard bearer 
of the newer methods of social case work in the commun- 
ity. Fortnightly, a committee composed of individuals 
representing societies, churches and clubs interested in 
social welfare, met to consider some of the more difficult 
problems confronting the society in its daily work, and to 
learn of the best methods of work tried elsewhere, in 
dealing with both individual and community problems. 


THE CHARLOTTE, N. C., SOCIETY 


The third Southern city mentioned above as joining the 
ranks of charity organization cities in 1910 was Charlotte, 
N. C. Its origin repeats an old story—a town so over- 
run with beggars that something had to be done. Its form 
of organization illustrates how rapidly the charity organi- 
zation movement was becoming truly national. In 1909 
a public meeting had, been called under the auspices of 
the ministers of the city. One of their number had 
previously communicated with the Richmond and Atlanta 
societies. Permeated with the ideals of charity organiza- 
tion, he was able to influence the meeting to take steps 
looking toward establishing a charity organization society 
instead of a relief society. An Associated Charities was 
begun soon thereafter with a local public-spirited physi- 
Cian as secretary on part time. This proved unsatisfac- 
tory, as the secretary found it impossible to devote the 
time needed for the work. In 1910 a union meeting of all 
the churches was again called, the field secretary of the 
Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage 
Foundation giving the principal address. A short time 
thereafter the Associated Charities of Charlotte was 
revived and a new full-time trained secretary was en- 
gaged. Moral and financial support were immediately 


356 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


forthcoming for the new work. The Associated Charities 
found cordial codperation among all the philanthropic 
agencies of the city. It investigated for all of those 
willing to supply assistance whenever asked for by the 
Associated Charities. The city of Charlotte gave no 
outdoor relief, but referred applicants to the Associated 
Charities. As the local Anti-Tuberculosis Association 
was inactive, the Associated Charities added to its other 
duties a campaign against this source of poverty, ap- 
pointing an active committee for this work. As the 
problem of the homeless man was particularly acute in 
Charlotte, the new society early addressed itself to this 
problem, believing that Charlotte could and would have 
_ as many homeless men as it cared to support. Its belief, 
based on almost universal experience, was_ justified. 
When homeless men were almost always referred to 
the Associated Charities, the chief of police rendering 
great assistance by keeping this class and all beggars off 
the streets, the problem was reduced to a minimum. 


THE MEMPHIs SOCIETY 


Reference to the new movement in the South would 
not be complete without mention of the remarkable 
social development of Memphis, the commercial cen- 
ter of its section of the country. In 10907 there 
was only one modern social agency in the city, a 
playground association. By 1913 a civic awakening 
had provided the city with a progressive juvenile court, an 
efficient Department of Health, which was receiving an 
appropriation of approximately 10% of the total income 
of the city, and an Associated Charities launched two 
years previous, which had had a remarkable growth 
increasing its budget of $12,000 for the first year to 


*Later the city council appropriated $1500 a year for relief purposes 
but agreed. to furnish no relief unless indorsed by the Associated 
Charities. 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 357 


$33,000 for the second.’ The new society was unique in 
consolidating the relief-giving, the dispensary service and 
the visiting nursing of the city into one organization, in 
the belief that these three divisions of work “more than 
any other agencies must work together in solving the 
problems of dependent families.”* It organized a baby 
welfare department with city aid. There were also 
established in the same way dispensaries for eye, ear, 
nose, throat’ tuberculosis, orthopedic, nerve, mental and 
skin disease service. Campaigns suggested by the Asso- 
ciated Charities and conducted by the bachelors of the 
city, resulted in the establishment of a new Municipal 
Children’s Hospital and in a Fresh Air Camp for run- 
down and convalescent children and their mothers. In 
1914 the Associated Charities aided in the creation of the 
Memphis Neighborhood Nursery Association and in the 
establishment of a Department of Public Recreation by 
the city of Memphis, for which a budget of $12,000 was 
appropriated for the first year’s work.* 

When one considers the size of the negro problem in 
the South, and when one appreciates the fact that charity 
organization is a plant of slow growth, one is not sur- 
prised to learn that the problem of family rehabilitation 
among negroes except in a few places such as Memphis 
has remained largely untouched.* During the period 


*There had preceded a DPnited Charities which was such only in 
name. Its budget had been $2,400 a year. 

* Third Annual Report, Associated Charities of Memphis, p. 2 (1913- 
IQI4). 

*The committee appointed by the Mayor to make a survey and 
report on the need for this work had as its Vice-Chairman, the President 
of the Associated Charities, and as its Secretary, the Secretary of the 
Associated Charities. 

*This does not mean that nothing was done for negro cases. In 
but few places, however, were they found to apply to the local charity 
Organization society, and those who did usually needed hospital treat- 
ment. Opinion seemed divided as to the question of using colored 
workers for colored cases, with the weight of opinion in favor of such. 
The work for negroes was most fully developed in Memphis, where 
the Associated Charities operated a negro auxiliary known as the 
Colored Federated Charities. This has a board of negro directors 
and is practically a department of the Associated Charities with its own 


358 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


under review the feeling seemed to have been fairly gen- 
eral that it was wiser to concentrate on the problem of 
poverty among the whites, leaving that among the colored 
for the future. That the negro problem is largely a pov- 
erty problem, has only recently begun to be realized. 

Thus within less than a decade did the movement for 
organizing charity gain a firm hold in a score of cities 
of the “new South.” Since then progress has been 
assured. Old territory has been held and new gained. 
The number of active and efficient societies with 
paid workers has greatly increased. There has also 
developed a community of interest among the charity 
organization societies of the seven southeastern states 
that augurs well for the future. This has been 
particularly true in handling the problem of charitable 
transportation, a problem that has been acute in the 
South. Not only among themselves do the charity or- 
ganization societies of the South live up to the national 
transportation agreement, but they have been instru- 
mental in getting a number of southern cities to adopt 
ordinances, obligating themselves to fulfill the terms of 
the transportation agreement in the issuance of charity 
transportation. 


GROWTH IN WEST 


Although the movement had gained a foothold in 
several of the larger cities across the Mississippi River 
two decades earlier, up to the beginning of the years 
here surveyed the development had been slow and uneven. 
In the main, the societies whose origins antedated 1905 
were to be found in Iowa, Missouri, Colorado and 
California. With the exception of Minneapolis, St. 


committees and workers. The negroes in two years raised $2,500 among 
116 subscribers, thus meeting one-fourth of the cost of operating the 
negro department. 

*See L. H. Hammond, “In Black and White,” 244 pp. (1914). 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 359 


Louis, Kansas City (Mo.), Denver, Seattle, Portland, 
San Francisco and Los Angeles, the societies were to be 
found in the smaller cities and towns. Of the thirty odd 
societies one could count on one hand the number of 
places in this vast territory where the standards of work 
done approximated the best of the country at large. 
Typical of this group was the Minneapolis Society, which 
since 1884 had enjoyed almost uninterrupted progress. 
Through its departments of relief and aid, visiting nurs- 
ing, anti-tuberculosis, legal aid, visiting housekeeping, 
employment, charities information, confidential exchange, 
Red Cross, education, and social welfare promotion, it 
was at this time, not only aiding the poor of Minneapolis 
in a constructive way, but also attacking in farsighted 
fashion community problems as well. The majority of 
societies during at least the first half of the period cov- 
ered by this chapter (1905-1921) had either no grip on 
the local situation, or were charity organization societies 
in name only. On the Pacific Coast the movement had 
struck its roots even less deep. Of but one society could 
it be said during the earlier years of the period that it 
enjoyed the support of a strong board of directors. The 
San Francisco Society, because of its services subsequent 
to the earthquake and fire in 1906, won a place for itself 
in the community. The leading men in the various coast 
cities with this exception had not yet become identified 
with charity organization. The financial support every- 
where was inadequate. Societies were still using un- 
trained workers. 

The relatively slow spread of the movement through- 
out the West was to be expected. Here free land 
was most accessible. Being a newer section of the 
country, social problems were naturally later in de- 
veloping.t It took a longer time to appreciate the 
need for a vigorous and intelligent grappling with the 


*It should be recalled that during the period under review the popu- 
lation of some western cities doubled and even tripled. 


360 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


problem of the neglected family in its home. Moreover, 
in certain sections of the West people were just making 
their money. Whatever contributions they made to 
charity came out of their tills and not from bank accounts. 
Then again the movement had been introduced into some 
localities largely through imitation of development else- 
where. Such societies were destined to remain for some 
time largely paper organizations. Usually progress 
was held back for just the opposite reason. Western 
communities generally were individualistic and preferred 
to do things their own way, ignoring often the benefits 
of the experience of older communities. 

In nothing is the vitality of the movement better illus- 
trated than in the changes which have taken place in the 
West in the last decade. Although in some places 
progress has still been slow and the history of indi- 
vidual societies may aptly be described as checkered, 
nevertheless, family welfare agencies have in the main 
found real places for themselves. ‘Some of the older 
societies have entered a period of renewed youth which 
promises well for the future. The work in one place which 
had lagged, under a trained worker made a name for 
itself. Still another society which had lost the confidence 
of a considerable proportion of the public-spirited citizens 
of its own community and was out of touch with the 
other societies and the National Conference of Charities 
and Correction has regained its place of usefulness, while 
the work in still other places has gone quietly but steadily 
forward. 

According to the directory of Charity Organization 
Societies, there were in December, 1912, 154 organiza- 
tions in the United States. Of these only fifteen (of which 
seven were members of the American Association of 
Societies for Organizing Charity) were in the Southwest. 
Considering the sparseness of population in much of this 
territory, this statement is not so surprising. Neverthe- 
less, the territory did offer an important field for the 


te nn 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 361 


extension of charity organization principles. In 1912-13 
the American Association of Societies for Organizing 
Charity entered this magically changing section of the 
country, when a society was organized at Texarkana, 
Arkansas. Since then the movement has made steady 
gains in the Southwest. 

Like progress has been made in the great Northwest. 
In ro11 the first Northwestern Conference of Charities 
and Correction’ met at Seattle. The spirit of “up-and- 
doingness” and prevention permeated the sessions. The 
Opening meeting was devoted to a discussion of provision 
for the social future, forestalling the slums of older com- 
munities. Because the local charity organization society 
and local public-spirited citizens wanted the best council 
not only for themselves but for the whole Pacific North- 
west on the social problems they were facing incident to 
the immigration they expected with the opening of the 
Panama Canal, they began at the same time successfully 
to lay plans to bring the National Conference of Charities 
and Correction to Seattle in 1913. Inevitably the con- 
ference reaches a larger percentage of people from the sec- 
tion of the country in which it meets than from other 
sections. Its influence was therefore considerable in ex- 
tending and strengthening the movement for better family 
case work in the north Pacific states. On the other hand, 
it should not be overlooked that “the progressive spirit of 
the rapid social advance on the Pacific Coast was remarked 
on every hand by Eastern delegates to the conference.” ” 

In the spread of charity organization westward it is 
not surprising to note certain marked tendencies that 
have accompanied the development. One finds a desire 
to blaze new trails, due to the pioneer spirit. Communi- 
ties like to do things their own way even when viewed 
as “heterodox.” In the West, the relation between public 


®Since called the Social Service Conference for the Pacific North- 
west. 

* Roger W. Baldwin, “The National Conference at Seattle,” The Sur- 
vey, Vol. XXX, p. 590 (1913). 


362 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


outdoor relief officials and charity organization societies 
has on the whole been more cordial than in the East.t A 
comparative freedom in government and a confident re- 
sort to governmental agencies instead of private societies 
characterizes the social development of the West. This 
has gone so far in places that there has been the danger of 
a too great readiness to leave the whole social develop- 
ment in the hands of public authorities, forgetting, as has 
been well said, that “without the experimentation of pri- 
vate agencies and their education of public opinion to 
better standards, public authorities cannot go a very great 
distance.” * There is every reason to believe, however, 
that the common experience of the country and the com- 
mon sense of the West will prove a corrective to any 
tendencies which may make for a too one-sided social 
development, and that we may soon see the practice of 
sound principles of case work as universal in the West as 
it is becoming in the older sections of the country. 
Probably the greatest single factor in the development 
of the movement in the West, as in the South, has been 
the work and influence of the Charity Organization 
Department of the Russell Sage Foundation and the 
American Association for Organizing Family Social Work, 
whose secretary devoted his energies to the Pacific States 
as his first field work under the new organization,® visiting 
in 1911 four cities in Oregon, Washington and California. 
Since then many field visits have been paid to western 
communities, including the Southwest, either aiding in the 


*See Anon., Charities, Vol. IX, p. 18 (1902), and Charities and the 
Commons, Vol. XX, p. 112 (1908). 

*Francis H. McLean, “Getting Ahead of Social Problems,” The 
Survey, Vol. XXVIII, p. 418 (1912). 

*The new association, succeeding the work formerly done by the 
Russell Sage Foundation, was launched June, rorr. 

* After this visit to the coast Mr. McLean wrote, “It is now possible 
to speak with some degree of confidence regarding an attested fact. 
That fact is, that every section of the nation, no matter how far pushed 
out on the frontier, is in need of the codperative and systematic prin- 
ciples of organized charity.” “Year Book,’ American Association of 
Societies for Organizing Charity, pp. 9-10 (1911-1912). 


. 
; 


1 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 363 


_ establishment of new societies or in strengthening work 


already begun, while the Charity Organization Depart- 
ment through its confidential bulletins and Charity 
_ Organization Institutes ' has helped to build up a trained 


_ personnel in these same communities. 


THE EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT TO SMALLER Com- 
MUNITIES 


Although southwestern United States and the north- 
western province of Canada soon constituted the frontier 


_ work ahead of the American Association of Societies for 
_ Organizing Charity, they by no means comprised its 


only field of work. Since the nationalization of the 


_ movement an interesting change in opinion as to the 


size of population unit needing the services of a charity 
Organization society has taken place. Not many 


_ years previous it was generally believed that it was 


hardly desirable to create a charity organization society 


in a community of less than 40,000. When the work 


of the Field Department of Charities and The Commons 


was begun, its program included preaching ‘the gospel 
of the paid trained secretary on full time in at least 


every city of 20,000 or over.” By t1o12 the slogan of 


the American Association of Societies for Organizing 


_ Charity had become “organization as fast as possible in 


cities of 10,000 or over, experimental organization in cities 
of less than 10,000, all expansion to be regulated by 


adequately holding on to the ground which is gained.” * 
To-day the unit of organization is 5,000 or even less. In 


_ fact, hardly any community is now considered too small 


to organize its charitable resources even when to do so 


_it becomes necessary to share with another community 


or with a whole county the services of a paid professional 


*Persons are admitted to these Institutes on invitation only. It has 
been the policy to extend invitations with a view to strengthening 
the movement nationally. 

*Francis H. McLean, “Societies for Organizing Charity,” The Survey, 
Vol. XXVIII, p. 538 (1912). 


3 64 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


worker. Not social awakening but insight and organiza- 
tion and paid leadership in plain everyday problems are 
necessary to rural and semi-rural development. 

The extension of the movement to the smaller com- 
munities throughout the country has constituted the 
heaviest responsibility of the national association. This 
has been true not only because the field has been so ex- 
tensive and the number of persons qualified for such 
leadership so small, but because the extension has in- 
volved working out various forms of organization adapted 
to the varying and individual needs of the smaller com- 
munity. 

Because of the social needs on the one hand and the 
‘demands of social economy on the other, many com- 
munities found it impossible to organize charity organiza- 
tion societies of the pattern of the older eastern societies. 
Accordingly, some interesting modifications were soon 
evolved in the form of groupal societies where several 
towns combine under one competent trained worker who 
organizes family and community service under separate 
committees for each geographical area.‘ Another form 
of modification has been the county society, where a 
whole county combines under a trained worker.” Still 
another modification, first worked out in Grinnell, Iowa, 
provides a combination of public and private relief under 
a board of citizens and one trained worker acting as 
secretary and overseer of the poor. The Social Service 
League of Grinnell administers not only relief, but is 
responsible for work with children, the promotion of 
recreational faculties and other civic effort.* 

"Tllustrations of this last form are “The Neighborhood League,” an 
organization serving the Main Line territory from Radnor to Paoli 
in Pennsylvania, the Champaign-Urbana Society in Illinois and a tri-city 
organization, comprising the cities of LaSalle, Peru and Oglesby, 
ser ertns are found in the Social Service League of New Albany, 
Ind., and the Monmouth County Branch of the State Charities Aid Asso- 
ciation of New York. 


* The tri-combination of positions and functions first tried in Grin- 
nell, Iowa, was the result of a visit by Mr. Hanson, a member of 


ee 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 365 


As a method of social advance, charity organization 
has within it powers of adaptation not always found in 
the more highly specialized movements. 

In short, during the fifteen years just reviewed, the 
movement has grown more than during all the years 
before, the number of societies to-day being approxi- 
mately double that of 1905. The movement has not only 
taken firmer root in many communities where it had long 
been found ' but has spread to the old South, the South- 
west and along the Pacific Coast. Coincident with this 
geographic expansion has been an extension of the move- 
ment to the smaller cities and towns and in some instances 
to rural communities, until it may justly be claimed that 
the movement has become literally national. 


THE INTRODUCTION oF C. O. S. METHODS INTO NEw 
FIELDS 


Of equal importance with the geographical extension 
of the movement just noted has been the adaptation of 
charity organization methods to other fields of activity, 
until to-day these methods with certain natural modifica- 
tions, are employed by scores of organizations that have 
no claim to organizing charity. The most significant 
instances of such “extension” have been in the fields of 
medical social service, disaster relief and home service, to 
each of which special mention will presently be made. 
the Executive Committee of the American Association of Societies 
for Organizing Charity. For an account of the extension of the Grin- 
nell plan to other communities throughout Iowa and the part played 
therein by the University of Iowa, see Bessie A. McClenahan, “Social 
Service by a State University,’ The Survey, Vol. XXXIV, pp. 485-487 
(1915). 

*An interesting illustration has been the renewed youth of the St. 
Paul, Minnesota, Associated Charities, one of the oldest of American 


societies which after an honorable record of achievement, had lagged 
somewhat in more recent years. 


366 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


MEDICAL SOCIAL WORK AND THE MOVEMENT FOR ORGAN- 
IZING CHARITY 


In the chapter discussing “Principles and Methods of 
Charity Organization,” reference was made to the use 
that many hospitals were making of these principles and 
methods in their work of curing disease and of preventing 
its recurrence. The year 1905 saw the organization of 
the first social service department in a dispensary,’ and 
the beginning of a movement for trained social work in 
medical institutions that has resulted in the creation of 
not less than 300 social service departments throughout 
the United States, employing in some instances forty or 
' fifty paid workers, together with a large group of volun- 
teers. The movement whose history we are here recount- 
ing has played not a small part in the origin and de- 
velopment of hospital social service. In her book, ‘Social 
Work in Hospitals,’ Miss Ida M. Cannon mentions 
four important contributions which have been made to 
the development of hospital social work; first, by the 
society for the after care of the insane in England; 
second, by the lady almoners in London hospitals; third, 
by visiting nursing in its various forms; fourth, by the 
methods of social training given medical students in the 
Johns Hopkins Hospital.? 

“The second and probably most important contribu- 
tion to hospital social service,’ writes Miss Cannon, 
“comes from the reorganization of the work of the lady 
almoners by Mr. C. S. Loch of the London Charity 
Organization Society.” * The fourth contribution, the 
methods of social training given medical students in the 
Johns Hopkins Hospital, she describes as “the most sig- 
nificant contribution to the early development of hospital 
social service in the United States.” * Doctor Charles P. 

*The Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. 

*Ida M. Cannon, “Social Work in Hospitals,” p. 7 (1913). 


Sl Didhoe Du Ss 
eLUtda Deis: 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 367 


Emerson, who was responsible for the introduction of this 
newer type of training at Johns Hopkins Hospital, writes: 
“Tt was partly to aid their education that seven years 
ago (1902) some of the medical students of the Johns 
Hopkins University organized the first student board of 
the Charity Organization Society of Baltimore. They 
visit one poor family, or at most two families, assigned 
them by this society, for weeks, months, or even for 
‘years. They do what they can to improve conditions 
“in those households. No effort is made to select for 
these students families in which there is sickness.. The 
students learn how the poor man lives, works, and thinks; 
what his problems are; what burdens he must bear. 

In five years there were on the rolls of active volunteer 
workers of the three students’ boards over sixty students, 
or one-quarter of the entire enrollment of the school. 
They do not meet in the hospital but in the office of the 
Charity Organization Society. The reason for this was 
that every member of the self-appointed committee which 
guided this work was connected with the hospital and 
was also a manager of the Charity Organization Society; 
hence no conflict between these two interests could arise. 
All the patients at this hospital who seemed to need 
‘special social service were referred directly to this society, 
but the most interesting,and the best cases for the 
students to study are not these medical cases. This 
organized student work, with its purpose of training 
doctors in social work is, we believe, a very important 
department of the hospital.” ? 

The hospital social service movement had its birth in 
Boston, when in October, 1905, the Massachusetts Gen- 
eral Hospital, of which Dr. Richard C. Cabot was head, 
opened its social service department. He asked the hos- 

pital to provide a trained nurse whose duty it would be to 
_ *It is interesting to recall in connection with the work in Baltimore 
just described, that as early as 1889 in a two days conference on chari- 


ties organized by the Charity Organization Society of Baltimore the 
relation of the hospital work and charity organization was discussed. 


368 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


remain in the dispensary so that patients who needed 
more than medicine, could be referred to her. He wanted 
to learn in the first place, just how many such persons 
there were. One week’s demonstration was sufficient to 
justify the inauguration of such a service. The nurse 
was swamped with work. It is of interest to learn in 
Dr. Cabot’s own words of the incident that led to 
the organization of the new department, as it so well 
states the raison d’etre of such work. A ten-months’-old 
baby suffering with stomach trouble was brought to the 
hospital; ‘“‘we took it into the hospital,” writes Dr. Cabot, 
“and in about five weeks we returned it cured. We had 
in the meantime expended about thirty dollars. When 
~ we returned the baby it was without any instructions to 
anybody. . . . This baby was discharged cured into 
the arms of a generous, whole-souled mother, who wanted 
to give her children the best of everything. So the child 
got a hair-raising assortment of food, and in a few weeks 
turned up at the hospital precisely as sick as before. 
Again thirty dollars’ worth of care was spent. Again 
the baby was turned over ‘cured’ to its uninstructed 
mother and again the trouble occurred. It promised to 
be a case of perpetual motion. Baby goes out, baby 
gets sick, baby comes back, baby goes out, and so on 
forever.” ? 

Beginning with one worker, the social service depart- 
ment grew until it had many times that number of paid 
workers and a still larger staff of volunteers.* By 1910 
its annual budget had grown to over $11,000. As the 
work developed, it gradually divided itself into a number 
of departments, e.g., departments for the tuberculous, for 


*The founder of Hospital Social Service first became interested in 
social work through the work of the Boston Children’s Aid Society, 
then under a pioneer in the children’s field, Charles W. Birtwell. 

* Philip Davis, editor “The Field of Social Service.” See Chap. V by 
Dr. R. C. Cabot, “Health and Medical Social Service,” pp. 70-71 (1915). 

*The Boston Associated Charities codperated through its general sec- 
retary, who frequently spoke to the workers at the Hospital on the 
principles and methods of social case work. 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 369 


nervous people, for the problem of sex, and for teaching 
hygiene. The spread of the truth that all medical workers 
need for their own best work, the social point of view 
of which hospital social service is the embodiment, soon 
Teflected itself in the increasing use of the Boston Confi- 
dential Exchange by medical agencies. In 1900 the Con- 
fidential Exchange received from medical agencies 32 
reports, and sent to the medical agencies 7. Ten years 
later it received 4,226 reports and sent 1,745.1 The de- 
velopment of the movement throughout the country since 
1905 has been, as stated, phenomenal. It has included 
in its scope public as well as privately endowed hospitals 
and dispensaries. 

The socializing of the medical profession has been ac- 
‘companied by medicalizing the trained social worker. 
This has resulted in a new kind of social case work which 
takes into account the vital connection of air and sunlight 
to health and well-being—a social case work that recog- 
nizes the fact that crankiness, not to mention inefficiency, 
is often due to sickness. Since 1905 there has been a 
more general recognition that “C. O. S. cases” are often 
sick cases. The renaissance of social case work which 
characterizes the period here surveyed was in no small 
measure due to the growth of the fundamental idea un- 
derlying medical social service. 


THE BEGINNINGS OF SPECIAL TREATMENT FOR THE 
HANDICAPPED 


The year following the launching of the hospital social 
work movement, the New York Charity Organization 
Society established a special employment bureau for 
placing the physically, mentally and socially handicapped 
in positions where their particular handicap would not 
interfere with the work to be done. The project grew out 


1 Thirty-second Annual Report of the Associated Charities of Boston, 
p. 13 (1911). 


370 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


of a local physician’s isolated experiments with his dis- 
pensary patients and the problems constantly faced by 
the Society in its treatment of homeless men. It was the 
hope of the Society that “this bureau would succeed in 
preventing disease and disability by placing in suitable 
employment, before invalidism had resulted, those unable 
without danger to their health to continue their usual 
occupations; and that it would succeed in restoring 
entirely or partially to self-support those physically so 
disabled or otherwise handicapped as to have no available 
opportunity for employment.’”? 

The more important classes among the handicapped 
who came to the bureau were the aged, cripples, invalids 
' (chiefly tuberculosis), convalescents, and physical and 
mental defectives. After the bureau had been in opera- 
tion two years, the number of applicants averaged over 
a hundred a month, with number of placements 
amounting to 80 per cent. of the applications. The 
wages obtained averaged about seven dollars a week, 
or not much less than the average for unskilled able- 
bodied labor. In spite of the fact that the bureau had 
thus rendered a unique and invaluable service to its 
numerous beneficiaries, and thereby materially les- 
sened the demand upon the charitable resources of 
the community, and ‘“‘in spite of the fact that an em- 
ployment bureau is believed to be a final solution for 
certain individuals and perhaps even for certain classes 
among the handicapped,” the twenty-eighth annual 
report of the Society stated “it is nevertheless clear that 
placement of individuals is merely a temporizing measure 
as applied to the larger classes, and that for adequate 
handling of the problems presented by them, resort must 
be had to larger measures,” * such as compulsory insur- 
ance for old age, workmen’s compensation, and the pre- 

*Thirtieth Annual Report of The Charity Organization Society of 
The City of New York, p. 55 (1912). 


* Twenty-eighth Annual Report of The Charity Organization So- 
ciety of the City of New York, p. 46 (1910). 


~~ 


THE NATIONALIZATION ‘OF THE MOVEMENT 371 


vention of industrial accidents. But above all, because 


it was felt that the bureau had failed to accomplish its 


primary purpose it was abolished in t912. In the words 
of those responsible for the work it had failed because it 
had ‘not been possible to secure such interest on the part 


of employers and such continued codperation on the part 
of dispensaries and hospitals, as to bring together pro- 


spective employees and employers with suitable work to 
afford, soon enough to accomplish the desired result.’ 
It had also failed to accomplish its second purpose 
because it had found it “impossible to create a market 
for the labor of crippled adults without fitting them, by 
training in suitable kinds of industry, to compete on prac- 


tically even terms with those who are not handicapped.”? 


The natural and desirable arrangement seemed to asso- 
ciate the employment of persons so handicapped with a 
training school adapted to their needs. As this type of 
school was then about to open its doors, the time seemed 


opportune for the Society to discontinue its special work 


for the handicapped. The effort to find employment for 
handicapped persons in families under the care of the 
Society was not abandoned, but was assumed by those 
at work in the respective districts of the Society. In 
spite of the abandonment of special work for the handi- 
capped, the experiment just described proved an authori- 
tative contribution to social experience and has since 
blazed the trail for similar work by other social agencies,® 
especially by the American Red Cross in its work with 
war cripples. 


* Thirtieth Annual Report, The Charity Organization Society of The 
City of New York, p. 55 (1912). 

mibid., p. 55. 

The Minneapolis Society seems to have had similar difficulties in con- 
ducting an employment bureau limited to the handicapped. 

*See Richard C. Cabot, “Health and Medical Social Service,” Chap- 


ter V of the “Field of Social Service,” ed. by Philip Davis, pp. 75-76 
(101s). Also “Labor Exchangers for Cincinnati Handicapped,” The 


Survey, Vol. XXXII, pp. 189-190 (1914), and Ruth A. Adamson, “A 


- Workshop for the Handicapped,” The Survey, Vol. XXXVI, pp. 392-393 


(1916). 


372 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


THE INEBRIATE 


One of the most difficult types of problems confront- 
ing family social workers is that of the inebriate. Like 
devil-grass, alcoholism often underlies many other prob- 
lems, especially vagrancy, desertion and non-support. In 
1907 the Boston Associated Charities made an interesting 
study of families in which some member of the family 
was intemperate. Among other things, it showed what 
was found true elsewhere, ‘that it was worth while to 
work for the reform of drunkards through individual 
treatment, but that such work must be supplemented by 
intelligent action on the part of the courts.” + Contem- 
poraneous with the Boston study, the Associated Charities 
of Atlanta had succeeded in getting the City Council to 
pass an ordinance providing a probation officer to look 
after drunkards brought before the Court. 

A few years later (1910), as the result in part of the 
labors of the Committee on Criminal Courts of the New 
York Charity Organization Society, a law was passed 
applicable to New York City, which represented the 
wisest and most advanced system of dealing with 
inebriates which had as yet been devised in America.” 
The measure substituted for short term commitments to 
the penitentiary for drunkenness, which involve stigma 
and contamination for the man, often poverty for his 
family, and cost to the taxpayers, a system of probation 
and probationary fines worked out without imprisonment; 
and for incorrigible offenders commitment to a farm 
colony and hospital for care and cure. The type of 
social machinery which such a law supplies makes pos- 
sible a more efficient method of treatment in inebriate 
cases than previously was possible. In the same year as 


*Margaret F. Byington, “What Social Workers Should Know About 
Their Own Communities,” p. 22 (1911). 

*The New York State Charities Aid through a committee on in- 
ebriety also played an active part. 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 373 


the passage of this law the Buffalo Society created a Com- 
mittee on Inebriety to work for the passage of a state law 
applicable to Buffalo, similar to the law of New York 
City. The law was passed the next year. Throughout 
the country from then on one finds a general and increas- 
ing interest among charity organization societies in a bet- 
ter handling of this problem.’ It should be noted in pass- 
ing that the wisdom of committing the habitual drunkard 
to the custody of a competent probation officer instead of 
fining him and imposing short sentences to jail or work- 
house had long been recognized by those with first-hand 
knowledge of the problem.’ 


THE PREVENTION OF ALCOHOLISM 


Credit for the most active work to prevent alcoholism 
belongs to the Associated Charities of Boston. In most 
other places the local society has been preoccupied with 
the treatment of the inebriate, a phase of the problem 
more closely related to their immediate tasks. The more 
recent efforts of the Boston Society have placed the 
emphasis on prevention. As early as 1rgio it formed a 
Committee for the Study of the Alcohol Problem, made 
up of men of various professions, but largely of well- 
known Boston physicians.*® 

The committee aimed “to undertake a scientific cam- 
paign against alcohol as careful and thorough as that 
which has been started against tuberculosis.” * ‘“Believ- 
ing that the real solution of the alcohol problem will come 
only when public opinion has been aroused to full realiza- 


*See also Inebriety Section, Proceedings, National Conference of 
Charities and Correction, pp. 79-145, 43d session (1916). 

*T. D. Crothers, M.D., “The Problem of Inebriate Pauperism,” Pro- 
ceedings, International Conference of Charities and Correction, pp. 140- 
146 (1893). 

*One of the aims throughout was to keep the campaign a doctor’s 
movement, in harmony with the trend of treating inebriety as a disease 
rather than as a moral defect to be reached by evangelical methods. 

* Thirty-first Annual Report, Boston Associated Charities, p, 23 (1910). 


374 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


tion of the harmfulness of alcohol,’ ! the committee did 
not rush into legislation, but stood ready to supply infor- 
mation which would gradually help to mould public 
opinion. It also stood ready to aid well considered reform 
measures. 

Realizing that “prevention” must begin with the young, 
the committee, through the codperation of the State Board 
of Education, began giving, in 1911, lectures in some of 
the Normal schools of the State. A series of stories for 
children was also published in a paper having a large 
circulation in Sunday schools. The Boston Society shortly 
after prepared a leaflet to social workers who, “tired ‘of 
bailing with the tap on,’ want to fight alcohol with increas- 
‘ing education.” * By 1913 the committee had launched 
a vigorous poster campaign against alcohol, which played 
a definite part in the rising anti-alcohol movement, cul- 
minating in the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to 
the Federal Constitution. In 1918 the social welfare 
agencies of the city broke through “their time-honored 
silence on the subject, when the eighteen agencies which 
make up the league for preventive work,° held a two- 
session conference on the social significance of alcohol, at 
which for the first time the facts as known through their 
work with families were given to the public, and later 
published by the league for immediate legislative use. 


CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETIES AND NATIONAL 
DISASTERS 


In the thirty-five years which preceded the period 
covered by this chapter there had occurred in the 


*Tbid., pp. 23-24. 

*These lectures were “Alcohol and Insanity”; “Alcohol and the 
Nervous System”; “Effect of Alcohol on Digestion,” and “The Social 
Cost of Alcohol.” 

*Elizabeth Tilton, “Are Social Workers Neglecting the Alcohol Prob- 
lem?” The Survey, Volume XXXI, p. 781 (1914). 

* Posters placed in Boston in April, 1913, had before May of that year 
gone to Saskatchewan, Alaska, Oregon and California in the west, and 
south as far as Florida. 

°See footnote p. 333. 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 375 


United States at least twenty-seven great calamities— 
fires, earthquakes, floods, yellow fever, epidemics, 
droughts, hurricanes, cyclones, tidal waves, shipwreck— 
which made necessary the expenditure of at least $25,- 
000,000 for purposes of relief. In many of these disasters 
charity organization societies had rendered yeoman 
_ service.? 


THE SAN FRANCISCO FIRE 


_ Probably the greatest demonstration of the benefits in 
time of great disasters, of trained leadership and of 
methods which are known to preserve and reéstablish 
the spirit of independence in those who have suffered 
crushing loss, and which will safeguard the money con- 
tributed and account fully for all expenditures, came early 
in the years covered by this chapter, when in 1906 an 
earthquake and a fire resulting therefrom destroyed “the 
very heart and vitals” of the city of San Francisco. The 
number of buildings destroyed was 28,188, the number 
of persons made homeless about 200,000. The property 
loss has been estimated at $500,000,000, of which only 
$200,000,000 is believed to have been collected from the 
insurance companies. The seriousness of the situation 
following the disaster was enhanced by the comparative 
isolation of the city and by complete industrial paralysis. 
It was the first instance in the history of the movement 
where one of the larger societies was called upon to face 
a colossal catastrophe. The immediate task was beyond 
*For a discussion of relief measures at the Chicago fire, the Johns- 
town flood, the Paterson fire, the Baltimore fire and “The Slocum 
Disaster,” see E. T. Devine, “Principles of Relief,’ Part IV (1904). 

See also Walter S. Ufford, “How Baltimore’s Emergency was Met 
by Local Codéperation,” Charities, Vol. XI, pp. 133-135 (1903), and 
Jeffrey R. Brackett, “Fire Relief in Baltimore,” Charities, Vol. XII, 
_ pp. 602-609 (1904). 

7“ comparison of this fire with that of Chicago shows that Chi- 
cago’s property loss was estimated at $192,000,000, while California’s 
loss is placed at more than $250,000,000. The loss of life in Chicago 
was placed at about 300, while in San Francisco alone conservative 


estimates have been that 500 met death. The Chicago fire left 98,500 
persons homeless; 300,000 in San Francisco alone are homeless. The 


37 6 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


the strength of the home society. However, with approx- 
imately a year’s time the local Associated Charities was 
able to take over all relief work and to place the remain- 
ing dependents on a more normal relief basis than had 
at first obtained. 

The first attempt at meeting the emergency situa- 
tion was the appointment by the Mayor of the city 
of a Citizens Committee of fifty persons. This com- 
mittee created a sub-committee on finance, but did 
little else. With the prompt arrival of Dr. Edward T. De- 
vine, then general secretary of the Charity Organization 
Society of New York City, sorely needed unification of 
activities was sought, and the Finance Committee became 
‘the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds, 
which, in cooperation with the United States Army, soon 
gained a fairly complete control of relief activities. It 
is to the credit of the charity organization movement that 
many societies at great sacrifice to themselves sent their 
executive heads to the scene of the disaster. Besides the 
New York Society, which contributed the services of its 
general secretary, who assumed charge of the National 
Red Cross work, Chicago sent Ernest P. Bicknell,’ then 
general superintendent of the Chicago Bureau of Chari- 
ties, and the Boston Society lent several workers, includ- 
ing Miss Alice L. Higgins, then its general secretary. It 
is significant of the growth of the technique of social 
work and of the skill of these trained workers that it 
became the almost immediate conviction of the local 
business men comprising the Mayor’s committee, that 
the matter of handling relief funds was a dangerous busi- 
ness, and could better be handled by specialists in such 
matters.” 


catastrophe is unprecedented in this country in the amount of prop- 
erty destroyed, the area affected, the number rendered homeless, and 
in the distance from the great commercial centers.” Archibald A. Hill, 
“San Francisco and the Relief Work Ahead,” Charities and the Com- 
mons, Vol. XVI, p. 135 (1906). 

*Mr. Bicknell afterwards became head of The American National 
Red Cross. 

7Joseph Lee, “Charity and Democracy,” Charities and the Com- 
mons, Vol. XVII, p. 391 (1906). 


THE NATIONALIZATION.OF THE MOVEMENT 377 


The real vindication of the method of charity organiza- 
tion lies in the fact that there were no real dependents 
to be found as a result of the fire.1 Those making the 
San Francisco Relief Survey found that although the 
burden of dependency was shown to have been greater 
after the disaster, judicious use of the relief funds and 
improvements in organization made better results pos- 
sible.? Thus it could truly be said that the administration 
of the relief funds of ten million dollars afforded the most 
_ conspicious demonstration that had ever been given of the 
value of cooperation and organization in relief, and the 
extent to which professional knowledge in relief adminis- 
tration had come to be appreciated by the public.* 


INSTITUTIONAL MEMBERSHIP IN THE AMERICAN RED 
Cross 


The American Red Cross, organized in 1881, was 
granted by Congress in 1905 a special charter empower- 
ing it “to continue and carry on a system of national and 
international relief in times of peace, and apply the same 
in mitigating the suffering caused by pestilence, famine, 
fire, floods and other great national calamities, and to 
devise and carry on measures for preventing the same.” # 
Recognizing from the experiences already noted, 
especially that of the San Francisco disaster, that it was 
essential to bring to the command of the Red Cross for 
emergency work trained service such as is to be 
found in the ranks of well-organized charitable societies 
in the larger cities of the country, there was created in 
1909 an “Institutional Membership” of the American 


*From an interview with the general Secretary of the Associated 
Charities of San Francisco, July, 1912. 

*John F. Moors, book review of “San Francisco Relief Survey,” in 
The Survey, Vol. XXX, p. 435 (1913). 

*See twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Charity Organization Society 
of the City of New York, p. 54 (1907). 

*Fifth paragraph of section 3 of the above mentioned charter. 


378 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


National Red Cross,! into which from time to time there 
has been invited certain of the more efficient charity 
organization societies of the -country. Since this step 
many societies, at great sacrifice to themselves, have done 
invaluable service under the banner of the Red Cross, 
notably in the Washington Place fire, New York City, 
in 1911,” in the Titanic disaster of 1912, in the disastrous 
floods of the Ohio River valley in 1913,* and more 
recently in the capsizing of the Eastland in the Chicago 
River tragedy, not to mention a number of forest fires, 
tornado and mine disasters. 

Occasionally such disasters, as in the case of the Ohio 
flood, which covered so wide a territory, revealed charity 
organization societies, in name only, which kept no 
records of families helped and were broken reeds when 
the test of disaster came. Perhaps the greatest need to 


*“Tn the event of disaster requiring large and unusual measures of 
relief, the institutional member in the community in which such 
disaster occurs, as the executive agent of the Red Cross, will be ex- 
pected to take instant relief action in the name of the Red Cross, 
pending the arrival of the National Director. Such emergency relief 
work by an institutional member will be under the supervision of 
the National Relief Board and the immediate direction of the National 
Director. 

“An institutional member will not be required to collect money or 
supplies for Red Cross emergency relief purposes. 

“An institutional member is to be solely an executive agent. 

“In order to fulfill its functions as an institutional member of the 
Red Cross, a charity organization society is expected to form a Red 
Cross Emergency Relief Committee with representation thereon of the 
local chapter of the Red Cross, if such there be. This Committee as a 
nucleus committee should be permanent, and may be temporarily en- 
larged upon the occurrence of a disaster requiring large and unusual 
emergency relief measures. 

“An institutional member is also expected, when practicable, to send 
one or more trained agents to participate in relief work outside of 
its own community, when called for by the National Director.” 

Extract from the Regulations Governing Institutional Membership 
in the American Red Cross. See “Emergency Relief after the Wash- 
ington Place Fire,’ Report, Red Cross Emergency Relief Committee of 
the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York, p. 70 (1912). 

"See “Emergency Relief after the Washington Place Fire,” New 
York, March 25, 1011. Report of the Red Cross Emergency Relief 
Committee of the Charity Organization Society of the City of New 
York (1912). 

*For a full account of the relief measures used in the Ohio ‘flood 
disaster see The Survey, Vol. XXXII, pp. 135-153 (1914). 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 379 


which many of these disasters called attention was that 
of a permanent and well-balanced family social agency. 
In places where such societies existed the administration 
of relief was expedited and safeguarded at many points 
by close codperation with them, and when it came time 
_for the Red Cross to withdraw and leave the last stages 
of rehabilitation in the hands of a community itself, it 
was often the charity organization society that stepped 
into the breach and carried the work to a successful con- 
clusion.! 


THE DEPRESSION OF 1907-08 


Because of the industrial paralysis of the country in 
1907-08, charity organization societies on all sides re- 
ported an increase in distress. The number of applicants 
during the three winter months was in many places double 
that of the winter before, while the number during the 
spring had more than quadrupled the corresponding figure 
of the year previous. Although the number of clients fell 
off during the summer, as was to be expected, it was often, 
nevertheless, over twice the number of the preceding 
summer. Naturally, on all hands, there was a phenomenal 
increase in the problem of the unemployed single man. 

As soon as it became evident that an industrial depres- 
sion had gripped the country, a number of societies pre- 
pared for the aftermath of distress. There was a dispo- 
sition manifested in many quarters not to repeat the mis- 
takes made during the depression of 1893-94, and to 
profit by the lessons then learned. Sixteen of the larger 
societies exchanged confidential letters every week or two 
during the winter in which were given their daily experi- 
ences and proposed next steps. The judgment of the 
majority of societies was to avoid treating the problem 
en masse, but as far as possible so to decentralize its 
handling that it would not get beyond control, stampeding 

*For a general discussion of the principles and methods of disaster 


relief see J. Byron Deacon, “Disasters,” (1918). See also ‘““When Disaster 
Comes,” a symposium, The Survey, Vol. XXXII, pp. 113-153 (1914). 


380 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


them into lowering standards. In many cities the societies 
for organizing charity were able not only to discourage 
centralized general schemes for dealing with distress,’ 
but also to differentiate sharply between plans for the 
homeless and those for family distress. Frequently they 
urged the expansion of existing agencies to meet the sit- 
uation, held conferences with such agencies, sought a 
logical division of work among them, quietly tried to get 
information about real need from those most likely to 
know, secured additional funds in unadvertised ways 
that would not increase unnecessary applications for help 
and greatly enlarged their regular staff of workers. 

An effort was made in many places to secure work for 
‘able-bodied men with families rather than to grant relief 
direct. In some places this took the form of cooperation 
with the city and other social agencies in the work of 
street cleaning in less privileged neighborhoods, the men 
so employed being from families which the local society 
would in any event have to help. Such also served as a 
work test. In other places it took the form of coopera- 
tion with the manufacturers who increased their forces in 
the production of staple articles and in rotation of em- 
ployees so as to give some work to the largest possible 
number of men. 

In a number of cities more good could have been done 
had the local societies had more money, especially for 
salaries for additional workers, to relieve those greatly 
overworked.” Even so, the amount of distress was infi- 
nitely less than where there was no charity organization 
society, as in Pittsburgh, at the time. In such places, 
although the poor did not starve on the streets, families 
were broken up because of poverty, others were underfed 
or poorly housed. 

The situation at no time reached the stage where 

*This was not true of Chicago where a general citizens’ appeal was 
made. 


*See the Thirty-second Annual Report of the Charity Organization 
Society of Buffalo, p. 5 (1909). 


THE NATIONALIZATION. OF THE MOVEMENT 381 


emergency agencies of the size of the East Side Relief 
Committee of New York or the Central Relief Associa- 
tion of Chicago, to mention but two of the temporary 
organizations that the depression of 1893-94 called into 
being, were found necessary. Work rooms for women 
characterizing the former depression were not a feature 
of the relief measures of 1907-08. Also there was far 
less of the type of mushroom organization that trades so 
largely on emotionalism and is responsible to no one 
either for funds or quality of work. In short, although 
the methods pursued by charity organization societies in 
meeting their problems during the depression of 1907-08 
were open in many places to criticism, some merited and 
some not,’ it nevertheless remains true that they mark a 
distinct advance in the field of administering adequate 
relief along scientific lines as contrasted with the situation 
in 1893-94. 

One of the results of the depression was a large increase 
in the number of charity organization societies launched 
immediately after the worst of the storm had passed. 
Many unemployed who could weather one year of hard 
times could not weather two, and so went over the pov- 
erty line the second year. Societies were launched in 
reply to citizen appeals that something be done to meet 
these conditions, for not until 1910 had the industrial 
_storm completely spend its force. 


AN EFFORT TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT 


With pictures of distress due to the depression of 
1907-08 fresh in their memories and believing that much 
suffering at other times is due to involuntary unemploy- 


*For example the methods used by the New York Society brought 
charges from many settlement workers of failure to meet the situation 
adequately. Almost unconsciously there seems to be a tendency for 
settlement workers to magnify and for charity organization workers 
to minimize the amount of distress at such times. Their respective 
angle of approach to the situation largely explains these different 
tendencies. 


382 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


ment,! a group of public-spirited citizens of New York 
City, identified in the main with the local Charity Organ- 
ization Society,” organized in 1909 an employment bureau 
known as the National Employment Exchange. A fund 
of $100,000 was guaranteed in order that the work could 
be carried on without any handicap during the first few 
years of its existence. The object, from the beginning, 
however, was that it should ultimately be self-supporting, 
as it was believed that ‘“‘a business rather than a charity: 
would attract a better class of both employers and em- 
ployees.* The new enterprise was noteworthy if for no 
other reason than that it was planned not as an emergency 
measure to deal with a temporary situation, but was 
founded on the belief that there is need at all times of 
adequate machinery to bring the manless job and the 
jobless man together.‘ 

The causal relation between unemployment and pov- 
erty had frequently been driven home. Previous attempts 
had, however, been limited in the main either to emer- 


*In 1896 Mr. Francis H. McLean, then of the New York Society, had 
selected from among those who applied to the Society in the year ending 
June, 1896, 720 cases in which lack of employment was assigned as the 
chief cause of need. (There were 924 such cases out of a total of 1884 
families known to the Society for the first time that year). In 107 cases 
it was later decided there had been some other cause for the destitution; 
in all cases it was found there was no need. Of the remaining 502 there 
were 106 cases in which the cause of need was doubtful, leaving 332 cases 
where the need was evidently due to unemployment. For a fuller state- 
ment of the relationship of unemployment and poverty see E. T. Devine, 
“Misery and its Causes,” pp. 115-135 (1913). 

7Jacob H. Schiff, Robert W. deForest, Otto T. Bannard, Edward 
T. Devine and John R. MacArthur were the prime movers in the work. 
The idea was suggested by Mr. Schiff and furthered by a report by 
Edward T. Devine as to the need of such a bureau, published by 
the Russell Sage Foundation. 

* First Annual Report, National Employment Exchange, p. 6 (1910). 

*It should be borne in mind that only recently has society begun 
to recognize unemployment as a problem of other than times of 
depression. In r1o1o the International Association on Unemployment 
was organized. In 1o1r came the American Committee on Unem- 
ployment of the American Association for Labor Legislation, which 
the year following became the American Section of the International 
Association on Unemployment. It was not until 1914 that a Na- 
tional Conference on Unemployment met in the United States and 
for the first time focussed the attention of the whole country upon 
the problem. 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 383 


gency measures at times of industrial crises or to work for 
the handicapped. However, it should be added that from 
no quarters did there come at this time any persistent 
agitation for a nation-wide system of labor exchanges that 
would function in seasons of prosperity and depression. 
_ Although approximately half the states of the Union had 
established free employment offices, following Ohio’s lead 
of 1891, nevertheless nothing like a body of scientific 
administrative principles had been developed among 
them. There was “no uniformity in their method, no 
cooperation between offices, no definite policies of man- 
agement.” There was “little or no comprehension of the 
nature of the business.” ” 


CHARITY ORGANIZATION AND INDUSTRY 


Interest of charity organization leaders in industrial 
problems has by no means been limited to unemploy- 
ment. Mention has already been made of the Pitts- 
burgh Survey, that pioneer piece of social investigation 
which was conceived, planned and carried through by 
one of the standing committees of the New York Charity 
Organization Society.* Charities, and its successor, 
Charities and The Commons, published by this same 
society along with its other interests, gave continuous 
and searching attention to all phases of industrial prob- 
lems. It is not, therefore, surprising to learn that the 
United States Industrial Commission, appointed by 
President Wilson in 1914, owed the fact of its existence 
in large measure to two members of this same society, 
_one of whom had been chairman of the improvised com- 
mittee which prepared a memorandum on the subject at 

*Possible exceptions may be made here in such efforts as that of 
the Buffalo Society in 1898 when it procured the passage of Employ- 
’ ment Bureau ordinances, regulating exorbitant and fraudulent charges. 
*See William M. Leiserson, “The Theory of Public Employment Of- 
fices and the Principles of Their Practical Administration,” Political 


' Science Quarterly, Vol. 29, pp. 28-46 (1914). 
*See p. 305. 





384 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


the President’s request for use in his message to Congress, 
and both of whom devoted a large part of their time for 
several months to securing the legislation creating the 
Commission.* 

Although no other charity organization society has 
taken so conspicuous a lead in working for a solution 
of those industrial problems whose existence lays so 
heavy a burden on these societies, it by no means follows 
that many other charity organization societies have not 
either officially or through the activities of their execu- 
tive secretaries supported child labor legislation, work- 
men’s compensation legislation, and legislation prohibiting 
_Mmanufacturing in tenements. In 1917 the American Asso- 
ciation for Organizing Charity passed a resolution calling 
for every effort on the part of member societies to prevent 
the breaking down of industrial laws in the passage of 
which many of the societies had been active, on the false 
assumption that the crises of war demanded it. 

Interest in industry as it relates to social work is, how- 
ever, by no means limited to charity organization societies. 
Though the problems of industry were seldom if ever 
directly touched upon at meetings of the National Con- 
ference of Charities and Correction antedating the period 
covered by this chapter, since then there has been an 
increasing interest at its sessions in the industrial field.” 


THE INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION OF IQ14-I5 


An industrial depression, beginning in 1914-15, once 
again brought the charity organization societies of the 
country face to face with a winter of distress surpassing 


*Edward T. Devine, “Organized Charity and Industry,” Studies in 
Social Work, No. 2, published by The New York School of Philanthropy 
(1915). 

* After three years of discussion a committee on standards of living 
and labor of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, 
drafted in 1912 a platform of “industrial minimums” covering stand- 
ards of wages, hours, safety and health, housing, term of working 
life, compensation and insurance, which showed a grasp of the fun- 
damental relation of industry to social work. 





THE NATIONALIZATION-OF THE MOVEMENT 385 


even that of 1907-08. After making allowances for the 
fact that New York City, like Chicago, Kansas City and 
Seattle, is a reserve city where the unemployed congregate 
during the winter awaiting distribution to new kinds of 
employment, 400,000 to 440,000 simultaneously unem- 
ployed in New York City in the early months of 1915 
indicated conditions of nation-wide unemployment of 
great seriousness. An estimate of two million jobless in 
the United States during the winter of 1914-15 is con- 
servative.! 

Even though a large number of the unemployed as in 
previous depressions never applied for relief from any 
charity organization society, the depression as in similar 
emergencies before, not only greatly increased the number 
of individuals asking their help, but also complicated 
their regular year-to-year work.” The situation was made 
more difficult by the fact that with the public imagination 
absorbed in the European tragedy, there was a tendency 
at first to forget the suffering at home, with the result 
that in many places there was a decrease in contributions 
for relief in the face of an increase of misery. In at least 
two communities the local charity organization society 


*Trustworthy unemployment statistics do not exist in the United 
States. The first of a continuing series of unemployment studies in 
this country was published by the United States Bureau of Labor 
Statistics in May, 1916. The second study in the series showed that 
during March and the first part of April, 1915, the percentage of unem- 
ployed wage-earners in fifteen cities was 11.5, and in addition the 
percentage of those working part time was 106.6. 

*The average number of families under care of the four largest 
relief societies of New York City increased in the fiscal years 1913-14 
‘and 1014-15 over the number cared for in the fiscal year 1912-13, 
23 per cent and 57 per cent respectively, while the expenditures for 
relief increased 14 per cent and 17 per cent respectively. Expenditures 
for material relief as here used does not include service or expendi- 
tures for relief other than to families in their houses. See Report, 
Mayor’s Committee on Unemployment, New York City, p. 25 (1916). 
The number of families never before brought to the attention of the 
Boston Associated Charities during the twelve months ending Septem- 
‘ber 30, 1915, showed an increase of 28 per cent over the previous year 
and of more than 50 per cent compared with the number of new 
‘families under care during the twelve months ending September 30, 
| 1913. The increase was primarily due to unemployment. 


386 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


had to close its doors temporarily for lack of funds. It is 
encouraging to add that these were the exception. In 
New York City, in spite of the big sums sent abroad, con- 
tributions to local charities were larger than ever. 

One cannot understand the role of charity organization 
societies in the depression unless one appreciates the fact 
that to a degree unknown before, employment was viewed 
as a community responsibility and the remedy for it, 
work. Since the last depression the creation of Depart- 
ments of Public Welfare, beginning in 1911, in Kansas 
City, Missouri, had taken place in a number of Cities. 
Even where no such Departments existed, municipal re- 
sponsibility for certain social problems, as municipal 
lodging houses, public playgrounds and recreation cen- 
ters, was being increasingly recognized. Public employ- 
ment bureaus had practically had their birth since the 
trying days of 1893-94. It was this growing civic con- 
sciousness that explains one of the outstanding features of 
the depression, namely, the appointment by the mayors of 
a number of cities,” including New York and Chicago, of 
commissions on unemployment who were not only to study 
the problem but also to recommend and carry out meas- 
ures for meeting the situation. It was also the increasing 
realization of the community’s responsibility for unem- 
ployment and the belief that the chief remedy is work 
that explains the number of workshops and wood camps 
opened by local municipalities and the appeals to em- 
ployers to ‘‘carry on” made in the give-a-job movement 
that was a feature in a number of places.® 


*These were Jacksonville, Florida, and Des Moines, Iowa. See 
Anon., The Survey, Vol. XXXIII, pp. 99 and 100 (1914). In both 
instances the societies soon renewed operations. 

*In Massachusetts, the Governor appointed a Committee to Pro- 
mote Work. The Governor of California designated the State Com- 
mission of Immigration and Housing to take charge of the unem- 
ployment situation. In addition representatives of seven cities met 
during the winter of 1914-15 at San Francisco in conference on un- 
employment. 

* Believing that unemployment should not be dealt with “as a 
problem of relief” nor regarded as a temporary problem but “as 


THE NATIONALIZATION ‘OF THE MOVEMENT 387 


In some instances the social workers of the community 
had been active in petitioning for the appointment of the 
above-mentioned commissions; in practically all they 
gave their interest and hearty support. The commis- 
sions’ various reports on the whole show a clear grasp of 
the problem and the measures recommended mark 
progress in understanding the principles of emergency 
relief .* 

Although there were established in a number of places 
palliatives such as bread lines, soup kitchens, free food 
centers, ‘“‘bundle days” and free “hotels,” 2 there was less 
of the type of irresponsible philanthropy of doubtful wis- 
dom that had been prominent in the depression of 
1893-94. 

Partly because workshops were a feature of the pro- 
grams of certain of the municipal commissions on unem- 
ployment and public work was pushed where possible, but 
largely because charity organization societies were more 
nearly able to cope adequately with the situation, emer- 
gency relief agencies of the type of the East Side Relief 
Committee and the Central Relief Association of days of 
93-94, were not called into existence. 

Instead, one finds the Charity Organization Depart- 
ment of the Russell Sage Foundation, early in the fall 
of 1914, sending a questionnaire to societies in cities of 
Over 100,000 population to ascertain what the signs 


a great and persistent problem” worthy of the “consideration of and 
action by those who are the dominant forces in our American indus- 
trial life,’ the Mayor of New York City appointed a committee 
on unemployment and relief with Elbert H. Gary, chairman, which 
included among its fourscore members, bankers, clergymen, labor 
leaders, both men and women, railroad presidents, and state and city 
Officials, as well as the heads of leading family agencies of the city 
and other social workers. 

*See especially the report on “How to Meet Hard Times,” Mayor’s 
‘Committee on Unemployment, New York City (1916), and the Report 
of the Municipal Markets Commission of Chicago (1914). 

*“Hotels de Gink,”’ as they were sometimes called, were organized 
in several places. The hotels were partially self-governing, the in- 
‘Mates holding an open court and adopting their own code of rules. 


388 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


were for an unusual winter. Shortly after, seventeen 
charity organization societies in cities with populations 
of 100,000 or over sent representatives to a private con- 
ference in New York City held under the auspices of the 
above-mentioned department. Soon thereafter, the gen- 
eral superintendent of the United Charities of Chicago 
drafted a comprehensive program for relieving and in 
part heading off unemployment and general distress in 
Chicago during the coming winter. The program gave in 
concise form some of the more important conclusions 
unanimously arrived at in the conference of executives of 
general charitable societies just referred to. Copies of 
. this program were put in the hands of every charity 
organization society in the United States and the program 
was printed in full in The Survey.1 Experience in meet- 
ing the emergency was also pooled through an Emergency 
Winter Exchange, conducted by the Charity Organization 
Department of the Russell Sage Foundation, to which va- 
rious societies throughout the country sent monthly writ- 
ten reports stating the methods being employed in their 
respective communities. 

In a number of places charity organization societies 
preached the gospel of preparedness for the coming storm, 
calling conferences of local social agencies to discuss the 
situation confronting them and urging the community to 
make use of the established agencies rather than to create 
new organizations for needs which might arise. In some 
places the city was urged by these conferences to under- 
take at once all public improvements already contem- 
plated and to employ as many extra street cleaners as 
necessary. In most places charity organization societies 
made ready for the increased demands upon them by 
seeking and often gaining increased support; by employ- 
ing a larger staff of social workers; and by welcoming and 
using to the utmost the service of socially minded volun- 


*See “A Chicago Plan for Meeting Unemployment and Destitution,” 
The Survey,” Vol. XXXIII, pp. 217-218 (1914). 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 389 


teers who, stirred by the need of the hour, came forward 
as they had never come before.? 

Finding work for the unemployed was the most im- 
perative task facing many of the societies. Although 
efforts in this direction often failed, many a family owed 
_ its escape from permanent dependency to some charity 
_ organization worker who, in spite of discouragements, per- 
_ sisted in efforts to convince employers and friends that 
_ the most effective means of meeting the situation was to 

give employment.” 

The task however so often proved impossible that 
certain societies were led to take the initiative in creating 
opportunities for work. Outstanding among these was 
the New York Association for Improving the Condition 
of the Poor.* Finding so many of its problems resolved 
themselves largely into a question of relief, giving gro- 
ceries and rent, where the one thing needed and 
wanted was work, the association arranged with the city 
to clear lands of the Bronx Botanical Gardens and 
the Zoological Park, and to do the incidental trench- 
ing, grading and roadmaking. This was work which was 
needed to be done’ but for which the city itself had no 
funds. The money which the association had been paying 

out as relief was converted into wages for the men. The 
work kept the men in physical trim to swing back into 
their own occupations when the wheels of trade and 





*The New York Society enjoyed a most phenomenal growth in the 
number of its volunteers. During the winter 271 persons offered their 
services, bringing the total volunteer force to 624, the largest number 
in the history of the Society. The Philadelphia Society added 350 
volunteers to its staff, in addition to 18 new paid workers. See also 
Anon., The Survey, Vol. XXXIII, p. 349 (1015). 

“In addition to personal solicitation the United Charities of Chi- 
cago had a good response to a folder entitled “About That Work You 
Want Done,” which enumerated the kinds of odd jobs for which it 
Was prepared to furnish men and women. The Memphis Associated 
Charities posted at the various exchanges, including the real estate, the 
merchants, and the cotton, lists of the men (giving age and equipment 
but no name) for whom it was seeking jobs. 

*The Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor is a charity 
organization society in all but name. See footnote page 169. 


390 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


industry should quicken, at the same time affording a 
test that separated the shirker, loafer, inefficient and 
physically incapacitated from those willing and able to 
work.! Every precaution was taken to keep the plan 
from savoring in any way of relief in the belief that ‘“‘doles 
of work” for “doles of pay” does not deceive men, and 
that a work test falls short of its purpose except as the 
jobs offered are for a fair wage and under conditions 
which do not tend to destroy a man’s self-respect. Ac- 
cordingly, arrangements were made whereby the men 
reported to the park superintendent for the places. 
Supervision and discipline were left to the regular park 
_ foreman, the understanding being that a good day’s work 
would be required of every man sent, and failure to com- 
ply with such requirement would mean dismissal. Wages 
were paid weekly by the park paymaster, who was reim- 
bursed by the association. The wage rate was $2 a day. 
Thus a man was assured $6 a week for three days’ work, 
and on the alternate days he could do other irregular work 
or search for an opening at his regular occupation. The 
whole plan was launched on the assumption that the need 
for it would be transient, though urgent at the time. 
Following much the same plan, the Associated Charities 
of Minneapolis persuaded the local Park Board to turn 
over to it for the employment of men whose families were 
in distress the task of clearing a strip of low land previous 
to its being flooded by the erection of a dam in the 
Mississippi. ‘There were no commercial bids for this 
clearing, which provided not only interesting work but 
also enhanced the appearance and sanitation of the city. 
_ In Dayton, two of the local improvement clubs, at the 
request of the Associated Charities, listed vacant lots and 
alleys which needed cleaning, and trees which needed to 
be cut down in their respective districts. Different 
*For an interesting account of the experiment and of the success 
of this particular feature of the plan see an account by W. H. Mat- 


thews under the caption, ‘‘Wages from Relief Funds,” The Sree Vol. 
XXXIV, pp. 245-247 (1915). 


aa 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 391 


_members of the clubs acted as superintendents of the 
work and different groups of men were sent daily to 
-places where work was being done, payment for work 
being made in coal or groceries by the Associated 


Charities. The secretary of the local Associated Charities 
reported that the men employed took pride in working 
for the betterment of their sections of the city, and the 
men in charge of the work became personally acquainted 
with men needing employment, and so were able to help 
them in other ways.’ 

In the main, charity organization societies throughout 


the country relied upon other channels such as the city 


government and industry, to provide the much needed 


_ jobs, contenting themselves with stimulating and codperat- 


ing in all efforts looking to the provision of real work. 
Fortunately the country was able relatively quickly to 
adjust itself to war conditions. War orders made work 


not only in the munitions and supply business, but also 


in scores of other fields, noticeably in transportation, with 
the result that unemployment, though always a problem, 
practically disappeared. This does not mean that the 
scourge of unemployment had not an aftermath in an 
increase of acute and chronic illness of which the lay 
public of many communities was oblivious. 

If periods of industrial depression afford a means of 
gauging the progress of the charity organization move- 


“ment, then the evidence on hand would seem to show 


that the principles of emergency relief were more intel- 
ligently applied in 1914-15 than they had been in either 
of the depressions of 1893-94 or 1907-08. As compared 
with other lean years, there was less talk of soup kitchens 
and bread lines, though some cities had their share. The 
homeless man was also not so much before the public eye. 
It was also an encouraging advance over other periods 
of industrial hardship that in most cities which made 


*See Grace O. Edwards, “Clean-up by Unemployed,’ The Survey, 
Vol. XXXIV, p. 96 (1915). 


392. CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


appropriations with the emergency in view, action took 
the form of providing real work at real wages. Phila- 
delphia was the only large city that voted money for. 
emergency relief only.t General relief schemes common 
to so-called emergency situations gained headway in but 
few places. Temporary relief agencies were conspicuous 
by their rareness. Where they existed they tended to 
duplicate effort ? and unnecessarily to confuse the situa- 
tion. On the other hand, many communities recognized 
the truth that to give time and money to strengthening 
and extending the work of well-established and respon- 
sible agencies is to give twice, just as truly as when one 
gives quickly. This meant that standards of work did 
not sag in general as they had tended to do in earlier 
depressions. In short, there seems to have been ‘‘more 
intelligent use of service resources than in 1907.” ? There 
was also a better organization of employment opportun- 
ities ‘‘without recourse to costly and ineffective ‘pseudo- 
work,’ and at the same time better use of increased relief 
resources.” 4 

These various gains of charity organization were due 
in no small measure to relatively greater preparedness 
among the societies resulting from the nationalization of 
the movement. Not only had the Charity Organization 
Department of the Russell Sage Foundation early held a 
conference of representatives of the larger societies’ as 

* The Emergency Aid Committee—a committee of Philadelphia 
women organized originally for war relief work—succeeded in get- 
ting the City Council to appropriate $50,000 to relieve the suffer- 
ings of the unemployed. The Society for Organizing Charity opposed 
the appropriation, urging that a far better plan would be to push at 
the time certain contemplated public improvements and municipal 
work. Several months later the City Council made a second similar 
appropriation. The bills were signed by the Mayor (Rudolph Blanken- 
berg), though under protest as wrong in principle. 

: As partial illustration see the 37th Annual Report, Philadelphia 
Society for Organizing Charity, p. 18 (1915). Of the first 700 applica- 
tions to the Emergency Aid Committee mentioned in the last footnote, 
600 were already under the care of existing social agencies. 


*Francis H. McLean, “Charity Societies,’ The Survey, Vol. XXXIV, 
P. 207 (1915). 
* Toid. 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 393 


has been stated, but during the winter of the depression 
the office of the American Association of Societies for 
Organizing Charity had conducted correspondence with 
no less than 289 cities on all conceivable points regarding 
organizations under given conditions and regarding policy 
in connection with situations which had arisen in the 
adaptation of the existing activities of the societies to the 
emergency of the winter. 


THE MOVEMENT FOR Wipows’ PENSION LEGISLATION 


Because family welfare workers early realized that it 
was a hardship to separate children from a mother who 
is of good character and who is prevented from caring 
for them only through her inability to earn a living and 
at the same time give them proper maternal care, it is not 
surprising that charity organization societies were among 
the pioneers in granting pensions to such mothers.’ 

This conviction of the value of keeping children with 
their parents or surviving parent is so much part of the 
warp and woof of charity organization philosophy that 
at least one society previous to the time of which we 
write had sought out families who were about to be 
broken up on the plea of poverty rather than wait until 
they might come to it. Thus a special committee of the 
New York Society interested in preventing the commit- 
ment of children in cases of destitution, instituted in 1898 
close codperation with the Department of Public Char- 
ities of the city. 

The immediate occasion for this step had been the pro- 
posal three times embodied in bills and introduced in 
the Legislature that the city of New York, instead of 
supporting children in private institutions, should pay to 
parents the cost of their support and thus prevent the 
evils of the separation of families and of institutional life 


*A pioneer in establishing the policy of keeping mother and child 
together was the Boston Society for the Relief of Destitute Mothers 
and Infants, of which Dr. Charles P. Putnam, for years a leader in 
work of the Associated Charities of Boston, and its president from 
1907 until his death in 1914, was one of the founders. 


394 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


for children. The Charity Organization Society, in con- 
junction with other societies, had opposed this legislation, 
not because it too did not oppose institutional care 
for dependent children but because it felt that great 
moral injury would be sure to result from such a return 
to “public outdoor relief.” 

Under the joint plan of the Department of Public 
Charities and the New York Society, the latter was able 
to visit those families where it seemed wise to deny the 
petition for commitment. If it appeared as a result of 
this examination that private assistance and encourage- 
ment would keep the family together and prevent the pro- 
posed commitment; that the home conditions were not 
‘unfavorable, and the parents or surviving parent was of 
good character, the superintendent of the Department 
was so notified, and the case was left by him for the time 
being in the hands of the committee of the Society.? 

When there was immediate need, assistance was sup- 
plied at once from the Provident Relief Fund of the 
Society,” or from some other cooperating relief agency. 
If it had been found that a regular monthly allowance 
of some kind was essential, it was provided either through 
special appeal or by the organization of various sources 
of relief, when such were available. Relatives, former 
employees and others upon whom the family had any 
claim were expected to contribute their due share, and if 
the family had any church connection, this was also taken 
into account. 


*“Tt is reported that in some instances parents are so anxious to 
keep their children that the task is easy, even though the amount of 
money required is considerable. The gratitude shown for the as- 
sistance through which it becomes possible to avoid the dreaded sepa- 
ration and the stigma of becoming a charge upon the public treasury, 
is ample reward for all those who have had a share in the under- 
taking.” Anon., “Organized Charity at Work,’ The Charities Review, 
Vol. X, p. 562 (1900). 

* This fund supplied emergent and temporary relief in cases in which 
relief has to be supplied before it can be obtained from other sources, 
the trustees of the Provident Relief Fund standing ready to supply 
such emergent and temporary relief when necessary, immediately upon 
the report of the Society’s agents. 


THE NATIONALIZATION, OF THE MOVEMENT 395 


“The society felt confident that any aid needed to 
prevent the breaking up of families would be granted by 
the community in answer to special appeals. These 
efforts proved that the need of separation of families on 
account of destitution is commonly exaggerated, that little 
material aid is needed to accomplish much in keeping 
families together, where adequate advice and personal 
attention is given.” + Whether rightly or not, the size of 
pensions granted were not so large as to remove from the 
mother all necessity for supplementing the family income 
from the outside.” 

Various requests from different parts of the city, 
especially from the district committees of the Charity 
Organization Society, were made for new day nurseries. 
Since the woman who was suddenly called upon to be 
both father and mother could not successfully support 
her children and give adequate care besides, the nurseries 
were asked for, to take from her shoulders part of the 
burden, thereby enabling her to provide for her own, and 
thus giving the child “‘its rightful heritage” and relieving 
“the state of the burden of support.” ® 

The success of the experiment just described is attested 
by the fact that by 1901 there were under the care of 
the Society some three hundred and fifty families in which 
there were eight hundred children who would have been 
accepted as public charges except for the intervention of 
the Society. A year later its general secretary wrote that 


* Jeffrey R. Brackett, “Supervision and Education in Charity,” p. 153 
(1903). 

“Opinions differ as to whether a widow with dependent children 
should ever work outside the home, it being urged by some that such 
outside contacts in moderation are valuable. 

* Anon., Charities, Vol. V, No. 24, p. 9 (1900). See also Mrs. Charles 
Russell (Josephine Shaw) Lowell, ‘““Why Day Nurseries are Needed,” 
Charities, Vol. 1V, No. 22, pp. 1, 2 (1900). 

*The entire number of children in these families was much greater 
than this, as parents usually apply for commitment of only part of 
their children, expecting to be able to support the remainder. See 
Anon., “Dependent Children in New York City,” Charities, Vol. VI, 
Pp. 369 (1901). 


396 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


it was a conservative estimate that the efforts of the four 
preceding years had saved to the city of New York “a 
round million dollars for the support of children” who 
were “better off in their homes, and many more than a 
million dollars’ worth of human affection and family life 
and parental care, and natural relation between brother 
and sister, between child and parent, between the growing 
child and the social and industrial life of which he would 
so soon have an integral part.” ? 

One of the most marked changes in the standards of 
work of charity organization societies since 1905 as al- 
ready noted, has been the change of opinion as to what 
constitutes adequate relief. Because of the resulting in- 
‘creased financial burdens, the belief gradually gained cur- 
rency that many charity organization societies were find- 
ing it impossible to raise enough money for the adequate 
provision for all widows with small children under their 
care. It was claimed that in many of the children’s courts 
throughout the land homes were being broken up solely 
because the mother was unable to care adequately for her 
children. Opinions varied as to how great an extent this 
was true and as to the best way to meet the situation.” 
Nevertheless at a time when opinion was much divided 
in the country and the weight of authority within the 
ranks of the charity organization movement was against 
a return to public outdoor relief in any form, the secretary 
of the National Probation League * successfully concluded 
a three years’ campaign in Illinois for widows’ pensions 


*Edward T. Devine, “Outdoor Relief,” Charities, Vol. VIII, p. 377 
(1902). 

*The method of the New York Society has already been described. 
A unique method was adopted by the Indianapolis Society in 1908. The 
plan consisted in the erection of a number of small houses which 
were assigned rent free to widows with dependent children under 
their care. In connection with the individual houses certain codpera- 
tive features of housekeeping were introduced for the benefit of the 
mother, who had to be away from home part of each day. The 
experiment has not been copied elsewhere. For a brief description 
see annual report, Indianapolis Charity Organization Society, pp. 27-28 
(1907-1908). 

°Mr. Henry Neil. 


THE NATIONALIZATION. OF THE MOVEMENT 397 


from public funds, by securing in 1911 an amendment 
to the Juvenile Court law.1. All the evils found by ex- 
perience to be inherent in any plan for public outdoor 
relief, together with many unfavorable local conditions, 
seemed to beset at the beginning the administration of 
the Funds to Parents Act, as it was called. On De- 
cember 5, 1911, Honorable Merritt W. Pinckney, Judge 
in the Chicago Juvenile Court, issued a call to most 
of the important social agencies of Chicago asking for 
their cooperation and moral support. As a result a per- 
manent advisory committee was then organized, com- 
posed of the official heads of a number of them, and two 
additional workers who had had considerable experience 
in Juvenile Court problems. After several conferences 
these social agencies furnished to the Judge of the Juvenile 
Court a special committee consisting of five experienced 
workers whose duty it should be to examine and pass 
upon all applications for relief. ach member of this 
committee, known as the Conference Group ? was given a 
commission by the Court as a voluntary probation officer, 
and thereby became an officer of the Court clothed with 
statutory authority and a part of the Probation De- 
partment. The members of this Conference Group, in ad- 
dition to being trained and experienced in this work and 
absolutely disinterested, had at their command all the 


*The law provides that: “If the parent or parents of such de- 
pendent or neglected child are poor and unable to properly care for 
the said child, but are otherwise proper guardians and it is for the 
welfare of such child to remain at home, the Court may enter an 
order finding such facts and fixing the amount of money for such 
child, and thereupon it shall be the duty of the County: Board, through 
its County Agent or otherwise, to pay such parent or parents at such 
times as said order may designate the amount so specified for the 
ae of such dependent or neglected child until further order of the 

ourt.” 

*The following organizations agreed to furnish workers their expenses, 
the salaries coming from private sources to make it possible for them 
to work disinterestedly for the good of the cause and not to be swayed 
by political consideration of any sort: The United Charities; Jewish 
Aid Society (Bureau of Personal Service Department) ; Roman Cath- 
olic Charities; St. Vincent de Paul. The fifth official is paid jointly by 
several of the smaller organizations. 


398 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


records of the private and public charities of the city, as 
well as of all the social and civic welfare organizations 
constituting the Advisory Board. The right of access 
to these records covering years of investigations and re- 
search is a very valuable asset. 

From Illinois the agitation for widows’ pensions spread 
throughout the country until, by 1920, statutes differing 
greatly as to details, but agreeing in principle, had been 
enacted in no less than forty states. In some states Com- 
missions on the subject preceded legislation; in others 
popular demand placed a law on the statute books with 
little previous investigation. 

One of the arguments in favor of widows’ pensions 
‘from public funds was that relief could always be made 
adequate since the state, unlike private organizations, 
possesses unlimited resources through the power to lay 
taxes. In practice it has often worked quite the opposite 
way. Not only have pensions granted been inadequate, 
judged by the most enlightened standards, but often 
widows eligible to pensions have been placed on long 
waiting lists before being granted a pension. It became 
evident in many communities that so long as private 
agencies, including charity organization societies, con- 
tinued to care for those families eligible for a pension, it 
would be easy for the state to evade the responsibility 
it had assumed. In one instance, at least (the Phila- 
delphia Society), this resulted in the local society an- 
nouncing that it would accept no more applications 
from widows eligible for care under the widows’ pen- 
sion act, although it would continue to help all widows 
then under its care. This action brought the need for 
more appropriations to the pension fund dramatically to 
the attention of the public. In a partially successful cam- 
paign for increased funds organized by the trustees of 
the pension fund, the local charity organization society 
and other social agencies of the city joined. Only by 
continual and persistent effort by all interested will public 


THE NATIONALIZATION: OF THE MOVEMENT 399 


funds ever be wholly adequate for the legitimate de- 
mands made upon them, and only by eternal vigilance and 
care on the part of the public will it be possible to main- 
tain the high grade social case work of which the pension 
will ever be but a part. 

Although the American Association for Organizing 
Family Social Work has never taken any official position 
for or against widows’ pension legislation and the attitude 
of individual societies has varied, it nevertheless is true 
that there would have been no nation-wide movement for 
widows’ pensions had it depended on the initiative and 
support of charity organization societies either individ- 
ually or collectively. 

Though the dangers of any form of public relief are 
great, the possibilities of widows’ pension legislation, 
wisely administered, seem even greater, especially if it 
leads as Workmen’s Compensation legislation has done, to 
preventive measures aiming to reduce the number of 
widows. On the whole question, however, it is fair to 
characterize the attitude of many family case workers as 
pragmatic. In order that the test of such legislation may 
be fair and final, charity organization societies generally 
seem to be whole-heartedly codperating in carrying out 
the spirit as well as the letter of the law. 


CHANGING ATTITUDE Towarp PuBLIC OUTDOOR 
RELIEF 


The charity organization movement began, in part, as 
a protest against the methods of administration of public 
outdoor relief then obtaining which was viewed as a 
tool of unscrupulous politicians, wasteful of the tax- 
payers’ money and pauperizing in its effects. Histori- 
cally, the administration of public outdoor relief had from 
the beginning of the movement been foreign to the spirit 
and methods of charity organization.1 The last decade, 


*See Chapter VI. Since these early days there have been occasional 
anti-outdoor relief campaigns conducted by various charity organization 


400 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


however has witnessed in a number of places a change of 
attitude toward the possibilities of a public outdoor re- 
lief system. At least, ong no longer finds the aggressive 
and uncompromising opposition to. public outdoor relief 
that previously obtained in charity organization circles. 
This has been notably true in Kansas City, Denver, St. 
Joseph, Dallas, Grand Rapids, Detroit, Philadelphia and 
Buffalo. In these places a regeneration, though with 
occasional lapses, has been going on. The attitude in 
such places is increasingly friendly toward improving 
the methods of administration of public relief and less 
insistent on its abolition. | 

For the first time in fifteen years municipal charities 


were discussed, diagnosed and remedies prescribed at the 


National Conference of Charities and Correction meeting 
in Seattle in 1913. The movement for widows’ pensions, 
and the recent creation in many municipalities, counties 
and states of Departments of Public Welfare with bureaus 
of social service are further evidences of a changing atti- 
tude, at least in some quarters, toward applying public 
funds for the solution of family problems.1' In 1918 the 


societies. In the late nineties the Buffalo and Hartford societies suc- 
cessfully launched such campaigns. See Anon., “Charity Organization,” 
Charities Review, Vol. X, .p. 6 (1900), and Anon., Charities, Vol. VI, 
p. 23 (1901). For a long time public outdoor relief had been a thorn 
in the side of a number of social workers in Boston, being viewed as a 
continuing and subtle cause of pauperism. Agitation for its abolition 
came to a head in 1888 and again in 1ogo1, but did not, succeed. Its 
failure was ascribed in the latter instance to what was characterized at 
the time as “an unfortunate loss of faith on the part of two or three of 
the natural leaders of public opinion.’”’ See Charities, Vol. VI, p. 253. 

There were always directors of the Associated Charities on both 
sides of the question. The president, Mr. Paine, never reached a con- 
viction on the subject, remaining ‘on the fence” on this subject until 
the end of his life. The question has always been complicated in 
Boston by two facts: (1) The Massachusetts law leaves the use of 
public outdoor relief entirely to the discretion of the overseers and 
does not limit it as the New York law does to the aged and infirm; 
(2) In Boston alone, out of the cities and towns of the common- 
wealth, the indoor and outdoor relief functions of the Overseers are 
divided. A distinct change for the better in the administration of 
public outdoor relief has tended to weaken the opposition to it. 

*To the city government of Kansas City, Missouri, belongs the 
distinction of having created in 1o1o0 the first Board of Public Wel- 
fare in the country, a plan by which the various municipal welfare 


THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MOVEMENT 40I 


American Association for Organizing Family Social Work 
passed resolutions urging societies to take advantage of 


opportunities to socialize public charities departments, 


and to plan divisions of work with socialized departments 
based on types of family problems, not on different func- 
tioning. The Association staff has taken part in two in- 
tensive surveys of public departments to help forward 
their socialization. 


COOPERATION BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE RELIEF 


In some instances a combination of public and private 
relief has been put into effect. Among the first of experi- 
ments in this line was Elmira, N. Y., where, in 1906, the 
work of relief in the office of the overseer of the poor 
was reorganized. For an imperfect registration and ac- 
counting system there was substituted a complete regis- 
tration and visitation of families. This resulted in 527 
thorough examinations, involving 5,254 visits. Finding 
cooperation absolutely necessary, the churches, charities 
and missions of the town organized a society, now known 
as the Federation for Social Service, for investigation 
and cooperation in aiding the poor of the city. The or- 
ganization had no funds of its own, but sent people for 
relief to the churches, charities or city, as seemed advis- 
able. The secretary of the Federation, a trained social 


activities were brought under one department of government. It is 
to be noted that this development in Kansas City was hastened by 
the failure of the local Provident Association, a survivor of the A. I. 
C. P. movement and the local Associated Charities to live up to their 
possibilities. The movement was, however, but an indication of a 
changing sentiment toward government action in the field of human 
Welfare. That the government should be “the greatest socjal worker 
of all social agencies” was advocated in many quarters. Since 1910 
Departments of Public Welfare have been organized in many of the 
larger municipalities of the country and in not a few States and 


counties. In 1916 the National Public Welfare League was incorporated 


in Missouri. Two years later not less than fifty Boards or Departments 


of Public Welfare had grown out of its work. Many of these Depart- 


ments represent real progress, attracting to them social workers of 


experience and proved ability. They have not been free however from 


' political attacks, some of which have been successful. 


402 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


worker, investigated all cases for the society. Within a 
month’s time of the organization of this new work, the 
Commission of Public Relief, advised by experts in the 
field of philanthropy, decided to discontinue the use of 
public funds for out-door relief and to allow the Federa- 
tion to give all aid to people in their homes. Money was 
collected case by case as it was needed. The result 
well justified its decision.+ 

As the result of a reform administration the Cincin- 
nati Society began, in 1912, to handle all relief for the 
city. A like plan was followed soon after by the local 
society in Bridgeport, Conn., and also in New London, 
. Conn. In 1918, Grand Rapids, Mich., adopted a similar 
plan. Relief was granted only on the requisition of the 
Social Welfare Association, the private charity organiza- 
tion society of the city, which rendered this service free 
of charge. Not only material relief, but also medical care, 
hospital care and admissions to homes and institutions are 
administered in this way.” 


THE IowA PLAN OF COMBINED PUBLIC AND PRIVATE 
RELIEF 


The granting of public relief in sparsely settled com- 
munities or small towns is coming to be recognized as a 
problem of considerable importance. The State of Iowa 
has become a pioneer in seeking a solution. A uniform 
system of public poor relief was first established for 
all the counties of the State. To prevent overlapping 
of public and private relief and to improve the quality 
of family work being done by the public officials, a com- 
bination plan of public and private relief with varying 
details was gradually worked out in six communities by 
the Bureau of Social Welfare of the Extension Division 


*Francis H. McLean, “Organized Charity,” Charities and the Com- 
mons, Vol. XIX, p. 1426 (1908). 
; ae Relief by a Private Agency,” The Survey, Vol. XL, p. 228 
1918). ‘ 


THE NATIONALIZATION’ OF THE MOVEMENT 403 


of the State University. Under its guidance local sur- 
veys were made and advice and help given. 

In one county an Associated Charities was organized. 
The secretary became the official investigator of all 
widows’ pension cases. Later the secretary was appointed 
overseer of the poor by the Board of Supervisors. This 
centralization brought private relief, county poor relief, 
and the investigation of widows’ pensions under one cen- 
tral board. 

In another community where the local charity organi- 
zation society had gone out of existence a short time 
previous, a Social Service League was organized, the 
board being composed of representatives of all federated 
societies. All of these societies agreed to discontinue the 
giving of relief, all distribution of relief to be made 
through the Social Service League. The County Board 
of Supervisors joined the League and the overseer of 
the poor became assistant secretary of the League. Thus 
the Social Service League serves as a centre for the ad- 
ministration of both public and private relief. Similar 
plans were carried out in the other communities operating 
under the partnership plan.* 

The changing attitude toward public outdoor relief just 
noted has doubtless been due to a number of causes, not 
the least important of which has been the improvement 
of municipal government in this country during the last 
decade. Governmental research has become one of the 
outstanding social movements of the day. In part, how- 
ever, the change has been one forced upon private 
agencies due to the increasing cost of adequate work, 
according to modern standards. With a more compre- 
hensive view of what constitutes a fair standard of life, 
material relief gradually acquired a new dignity. The pri- 
vate family agency has needed to husband its resources of 
time and money for the adjustment of those families 

*Bessie Averna McClenahan. The Iowa plan for the combination of 


public and private relief. University of Iowa monographs. Studies in 
$ocial sciences, Vol. V, No. 3. (1918.) 


404 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


where the investment seems to promise the greatest 
return. 


THE MUNICIPAL CHARITIES COMMISSION OF 
Los ANGELES 


One instance remains to be noted where the swing 
toward governmental participation has been so complete 
as to submerge almost, if not entirely, the private agency. 
In 1913 the city of Los Angeles, at the request of the Los 
Angeles Conference of Social Workers, created a Munici- 
pal Charities Commission, the first of its kind in the 
history of the country to have general oversight of the 
. social work of the city. Beside serving as a charities 
endorsement agency, the new commission was empowered: 


“To encourage the formation of new private charities 
to meet needs that are not already provided for and to 
foster all worthy enterprises of a philanthropic nature and 
to give assistance thereto. 

“To collect and preserve statistics relating to charities, 
conditions of life, unemployment and delinquency and to 
suggest means for improving the conditions producing the 
need of relief. 

“To maintain a constant survey of the field of charities 
with regard to the need and the work being done in con- 
nection therewith, and to secure intelligent co-operation 
among all charitable and social agencies in the city to 
the end that a comprehensive and economical plan in phil- 
anthropy may be attained. 

“To disburse all funds set apart by the city for chari- 
table purposes and to make a report to the City Council 
of the work done in connection therewith. 

“To receive donations, gifts or bequests to be used for 
charitable or philanthropic purposes and to administer 
any trust declared or created for any such purpose in ac- 
cordance with the terms of said trust. 

“To establish and maintain a bureau for the purpose of 
providing employment free of charge to persons apply- 
ing thereto, to furnish information concerning any vacant 


THE NATIONALIZATION. OF THE MOVEMENT 405 


position, situation or employment which may come within 
the knowledge of said commission, to keep a register con- 
taining the names and addresses of persons who make 
application for employment together with the names and 
addresses of all persons who are seeking help and to keep 
a list of all positions and situations filled.” By a later 
_ ordinance the solicitation of money for any philanthropic 
purpose was made unlawful except under a permit of the 
commission. 


It is seen at a glance that the powers conferred on the 
Commission are most comprehensive, the functions as- 
signed it being performed in most cities by two or more 
private organizations. ‘The creation of the Commission 
_ brought with it a number of readjustments in the com- 
munity’s social equipment. In the correlation of philan- 
thropic effort, a Council of Social Agencies was organ- 
ized. The Council, an incorporated body, may conduct 
certain bureaus with special boards of directors ap- 
_ pointed by the trustees of the Council. Under this plan a 
bureau for family social work, known as the United Char- 
ites, was created. The Board of Directors of the United 
Charities was authorized to raise funds from private in- 
dividuals. However, a campaign started for this purpose 
was abandoned and city appropriations were secured. 
The relation of the Commission to the Central Council is 
direct. Representatives of social agencies endorsed by 
the Charities Commission may be admitted to its mem- 
bership; also members at large not to exceed Io per cent 
of the total number of members, the latter nominated by 
the Charities Commission and elected by the Council. 

Several features of the Los Angeles experiment are 
unique. The Commission has not only the power to 
endorse charities, but to withold licenses making lawful 
any solicitation of funds. The relation of the “family” 
society to the Commission has evoked the following com- 
ment from one thoughtful student of the situation: “An 
associated charities which is entirely supported from pub- 


406 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


lic funds, managed by a board which, it need scarcely be 
said, must in the last analysis be acceptable to the Munici- 
pal Charities Commission, is not an associated charities. 
Modern thinking is beginning to conceive the associated 
charities as a free lance, hitting anything and everybody 
when necessary, for the welfare of its clients and clients’ 
neighbors. It can be controlled by no one and becomes 
something else the minute it becomes governmental. It’s 
the opposition, the everlasting opposition, friendly when 
officials and others are doing their best, but ready to 
buckle on the sword, the minute the revelations of its 
family work require it.” ? 

The experiment in Los Angeles has in many ways 
marked a step in advance locally over the system or lack 
of system that it replaced. Those however who believe 
that a private agency should be unhampered by the red 
tape of official machinery fear lest the new system fall 
into the pitfalls of the old system of public relief. 


* Francis H. McLean, ‘Municipal Control of Charities in Los Angeles,” 
The Survey, Vol. XXXIII, p. 401 (1915). 


CHAPTER X 
THE RENAISSANCE OF SOCIAL CASE WORK 
[1905-1921 Concluded | 


ALTHOUGH there had been slowly gathering a body of 
experience and to some extent a uniformity of practice in 
dealing with certain types of cases, such as the widow 
or the vagrant, there had been, previous to this time, no 
authoritative formulation of the technique of socia! case 
work and little public interest in it. The practice of the 
Boston Society still differed in some important respects 
from that of New York; Buffalo was like neither; Chi- 
cago differed from all three, and Denver was still dif- 
ferent. 

This does not imply that the generation that claimed 
Zilpha D. Smith, Fanny Ames, Josephine Shaw Lowell, 
Alexander Johnson and Amos G. Warner was without 
technique and standards. Nevertheless, in many socie- 
ties the process of comparing notes, of studying critically 
methods of case treatment, had made little or no progress, 
Family social workers as a group had remained inar- 
ticulate. That the time had ‘‘come for a more definite 
statement of just what we are doing for needy families” * 
was voiced on more than one occasion, but workers in 
the field had been such “deadly doers” as to find little 
time for such a statement. To state principles is relatively 
easy and consumes little time. To give an exposition of 
methods is difficult and time-consuming. 

Homer Folks, “The Care of Needy Families in Their Homes,” Chari- 


ties, Vol. VII, p. 413 (1901). 
497 


408 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


Coincident with the nationalization of the movement, 
there began a growing appreciation of the technique of 
case work. Self-questionings and a more or less open- 
minded acceptance of criticism and new ideas have char- 
acterized the years since. A somewhat apologetic atti- 
tude on the part of some social workers toward family 
work has been replaced by technical studies into its 
processes. 

There are several reasons for this renaissance in social 
case work. Social work, except possibly in the smallest 
communities, is no longer the undifferentiated field it once 
was. Although prevention is still the watchword of the 
day, housing reform and health campaigns, need no longer 
claim the time and energy of family case workers, since 
others have now come forward to carry the burden of 
these important but specialized tasks. Leaders in family 
social work can turn with undivided attention to the basic 
work of their societies and to perfecting a technique for 
its accomplishment. However, where no other group is 
ready to carry on a needed activity in the field of preven- 
tion, the responsibility is still viewed as resting with the 
local charity organization society. 

An important factor in the renaissance of social case 
work has been the advent of professional training schools 
of social work whose growth in numbers and efforts at 
standardization of instruction falls wholly within the 
period under discussion. 

Possibly the most important element has been the de- 
velopment of a body of workers first in the Field Depart- 
ment of Charities and the Commons, and later in the 
Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage 
Foundation and the American Association for Organizing 
Family Social Work, who are primarily interested in creat- 
ing standards and securing their adoption throughout the 
country. Through surveys, case history studies, and the 
publication of books, pamphlets and magazines and the 
printing of confidential bulletins, these organizations have 


THE RENAISSANCE OF SOCIAL CASE WORK 409 


done as much to increase interest in technique and to 
advance its standards as any other set of factors. 

Throughout, social case work has been greatly ad- 
vanced by contacts with other fields. The physician and 
nurse, through their emphasis on the importance of sun- 
light, air and diet, have taught family workers a new kind 
of case work. Psychologists, biologists! lawyers, stu- 
dents of standards of living,” and of industrial problems, 
and most recently the psychiatrists, have each contributed 
their quota to the enriching and revitalizing of the content 
of social case work. 


IMPROVEMENTS IN COOPERATION 


The outstanding improvement in technique has been in 
cooperation. During the past decade and a half, codpera- 
tion has become less of a paper plan and more of a habit 
of mind among social agencies. Before 1905, registration, 
one of the earliest devices introduced by charity organiza- 
tion for fostering cooperation’ had been given a fair trial 
in but two or three cities,® in spite of the fact that such 
a Clearing-house system is the sine qua non of all effective 
cooperation. In 1906, through the mechanism of a Confi- 
dential Exchange,* the first clearing-house of its kind in 
the country, the Boston Society paved the way for coodp- 
eration among the city’s social agencies such as had been 
unknown in the past in Boston, and was not to be dupli- 


*For the first time in the history of the National Conference of 
Charities and Correction, that body listened in 1912 to a scientific out- 
lining of the basis and program of eugenics. A recent instance of the 
recognition of the significance of feeblemindedness by a charity organiza- 
tion society is found in “A Study of Twenty-five Repeaters,” made by 
the Charity Organization Society of Portland, Oregon. 

* Among the first studies of standards of living was that of the Com- 
mittee on Standards of Living of the New York State Conference of 
Charities and Correction of 1906. It had a strong and practical effect 
on standards of adequacy of relief in the State. This study has been 
followed by many others throughout the country. 

*See Mary E. Richmond, “What Is Charity Organization?” Charities 
Review, Vol. IX, p. 497 (1900). 

*The nature of such an Exchange has already been explained. See 
pp. 125-128. 


410 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


cated elsewhere at the time. Following this, a large num- 
ber of other charity organization societies extended the 
work of their registry of families so as to include in 
the same file the registry of families dealt with by other 
organizations. At first only a few social agencies regis- 
tered in these exchanges, but as time went on, the number 
increased until they included almost every type of 
case working agency. The value of such exchanges has 
now been proven beyond disproof; its worth attested 
by the fact that it has since been introduced into a number 
of the largest cities of the land. In several communities 
it has seemed wise that the exchange should be run as a 
‘separate social agency, codperatively supported by the 
various philanthropic organizations making use of it. In 
some places they are directed by civic federations or 
chambers of commerce. In other places, as in Boston 
and New York City, they are a service still rendered by 
the local charity organization society. 

By 1915 the different exchanges in the country seemed 
to develop a consciousness of their own as separate and 
apart from the organizations which financed them, which 
resulted in groups of exchange secretaries meeting to- 
gether for conference at the succeeding social workers’ 
national conferences. These meetings resulted, in 1919, 
in the formation of an association of exchanges, which 
included all exchanges in the United States and Canada’ 
under the name of The American Association of Social 
Service Exchanges. 

The aid of social service exchanges to real codpera- 
tion can hardly be exaggerated. A striking illustration 
is found in Detroit where social workers from forty-five 
social agencies using the local exchange organized, in 
I917, a joint committee to promote closer cooperation 
and to standardize their case work. 


THE RENAISSANCE OF SOCIAL CASE WORK  4II 


NeEw STANDARDS OF TREATMENT 


The increasing attention paid by students of the 
social sciences to the study of what constitutes a fair 
or reasonable standard of life, has been reflected during 
the past fifteen years in the standards of treatment 
of many charity organization societies. Not only has 
recreation won a recognized place in all adequate stand- 
ards of living, but it is also receiving careful study on 
the part of family workers, in order that it may be pos- 
sible to determine just what kind of recreation will prob- 
ably suit given cases. 

Again, ideas of vocational guidance have changed the 
old haphazard placing of a boy or girl in industry. More 
and more, round pegs are finding round holes, and less 
and less are children of families under care finding them- 
selves a few years later in blind-alley occupations. 

The number of Home Economics specialists in family 
welfare agencies is constantly increasing. Some of them 
are trained in social work and, therefore, fulfill their spe- 
cial tasks with an intimate knowledge of the larger family 
problems which often have to be studied carefully and 
met wisely before adjustments in domestic economy can 
have their full effect. The result has been, in any event, 
a higher standard of treatment. 

In short, the current view of social responsibility has 
laid upon the conscience of family social workers bur- 
dens which, a short time ago, they failed to recognize as 
their own. This is reflected in the amount of relief 
now considered adequate, the subject of the next para- 
graph. | 

ADEQUATE RELIEF 

Almost equally outstanding changes have taken place in 

the use of material relief as an element in treatment. 


About the beginning of the new century. the idea seems 
to have been first advanced that charity organization 


412 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


societies needed a scientific study of standards of living 
as a basis for granting relief. This would at least en- 
able them to help all families under their oversight to live 
on a basis on which they would be willing that all the 
families of like circumstances should live. This is in 
marked contrast to the old English view that poor law 
rates or private charity should never put a family helped 
above that of the poorest independent family. About the 
same time the general secretary of the New York Society 
pointed out that resources for relief were “woefully in- 
adequate.” “Our use of relief,” he continued, “has been 
most sparing and timid. I am inclined to believe that we 
.have caused more pauperism by our failure to provide for 
the necessaries of life, for the education and training of 
children, and for the care and convalescence of the sick, 
than we have by excessive relief, even if we include the 
indiscriminate alms.” } 

The outcome of the general growth of these convictions 
has been an effort, on the one hand, to stimulate studies 
of family budgets, and the appointment by charity organ- 
ization societies of committees on Home Economics, and 
on the other hand, to increase the amounts of money relief 
granted to families when such is a needed element in 
treatment. 

This, along with other factors, resulted almost imme- 
diately in greatly increasing the budgets of charity or- 
ganization societies generally. In 1907 the budget of the 
Minneapolis Society was $14,000. Five years later it had 
risen to $55,000. To take a more recent illustration,— 
the budget of the Philadelphia Society had risen from 
$78,000 in 1912-13 to approximately $220,000 for the year 
ending September 30, 1918. Nearly $120,000 of this in- 
crease represented expenditures for material relief which 
advanced from $18,000 in 1913 to approximately 
$136,000 in 1919, an increase in seven years of more 


*See Frederic Almy, quoting Edward T. Devine in article on “Con- 
structive Relief,” The Survey, Vol. X XVII, p. 1265 (1911). 


THE RENAISSANCE OF SOCIAL CASE WORK 413 


than 600 per cent. While expenditures for administra- 
tion have increased, they have by no means kept pace 
with the rate of increase of the amount spent for relief. 

The causes for these remarkable increases in material 
relief are numerous. The various social problems being 
attacked by numerous new social movements called at- 
tention to many phases of adequate treatment previously 
overlooked. The growth in codperation, especially 
through social service bureaus, just noted, constantly 
turned up cases that would otherwise probably have 
never reached many a local charity organization so- 
ciety. The follow-up work on cases reported by other 
organizations, especially in the health field, still further 
swelled the volume of new work. In short, the rise in 
standards of living, the passage of child labor acts and 
of laws regulating the work of women, the limitation of 
home work, the emphasis upon the care of children by 
their mothers in the campaign for the reduction of infant 
mortality, the importance of an adequate dietary in the 
treatment of tuberculosis, the introduction of the scientific 
minimum budget for families,—all these things, coupled 
with the rapid increase in the cost of living, enormously 
increased the demands upon charity organization socie- 
ties. 

In the matter of relief, the last decade has witnessed 
another important change. At the beginning of the char- 
ity organization movement it was necessary to safeguard 
standards which were then for the first time brought to 
public notice. Though not relief-giving agencies, they, 
therefore, organized whatever relief they thought neces- 
sary. Later, as has been seen, many charity organization 
societies either gave from their own funds or raised it case 
by case, believing that a ‘complete separation of relief 
giving from other lines of restorative effort in behalf of a 
needy family is unnatural and to some extent impos- 
sible.” 1 For one reason or another, other social agencies 


*Anon., Charities, Vol. IX, p. 18 (1902). 


414 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


began thinking of their local charity organization society 
as the relief agency of the community, and began turning 
to it as a common relief pocketbook. This is a position 
which historically these societies never claimed and 
which, with the increasing costs of adequate relief-giving, 
just noted, has become untenable during the past decade. 
The budget for adequate relief alone of any American 
city of size would swamp a social agency attempting to 
carry it. Fortunately, with the development of the 
technique of social case work and the growth of standards 
quite generally among social agencies, this is less and less 
necessary. Charity organization societies, believing, as 
_always, that relief, though important, is nevertheless but 
incidental in good case work, generally hold the view that 
each agency doing case work can best raise and most in- 
telligently administer whatever relief may be needed in 
individual cases. 


IMPROVEMENT IN TECHNIQUE OF SOCIAL DIAGNOSIS 


In the light of the new studies in the technique of 
social diagnosis, it is apparent that much that was labeled 
“investigation” in the past was such in name only. As 
the relation of poverty first to one factor and then an- 
other has been emphasized, one change after another 
has taken place in methods of social diagnosis which in 
toto have amounted to a revolution. Three such factors 
have been stressed during the period under review. The 
emphasis on the relationship of poverty to physical disease 
embodied first in the hospital social service movement, 
markedly influenced case work by ‘medicallizing”’ it. 
The introduction of the Binet-Simon tests has given case 
workers a new tool for diagnosing some otherwise baf- 
fling types of cases previously unrecognized as sub- 
normal because so near the border-line. The new psy- 
chology and psychiatry are to-day causing still another 
revolution in methods of social diagnosis. Much case 


THE RENAISSANCE OF SOCIAL CASE WORK AI5 


work is now seen to involve adjusting the mentally mal- 
adjusted individual to his or her environment. Case 
work is spoken of in some quarters as “the art of un- 
tangling and reconstructing the twisted personality” in 
such a manner that the individual can adjust himself 
to his environment. Certain it is that a knowledge of 
mental hygiene is becoming part of the equipment of all 
case workers. The establishment of psychopathic clinics 
is leading to observable improvement in standards of 
diagnosis and treatment on the part of family case work- 
ers. To-day the movement for psychiatric social work, 
though new, is well recognized and fast becoming estab- 
lished. The demand for case workers with psychiatric 
training far outruns the supply. 

Although psychiatric social work emphasizes the prob- 
lem of the individual who is unadjusted to his environ- 
ment, such lack of adjustment is not viewed as a moral 
defect. Moreover, leaders in the charity organization 
movement have not lost sight of the environment that is 
maladjusted to the individual. This is the basis of their 
continuing interest in health and housing campaigns and 
their growing sense of the responsibility for improving 
industrial conditions.t Increasingly throughout the pe- 
riod the dominant note is a demand for social justice 
rather than for charity. 

“The only generalization,” writes a former secretary 
of the New York Society, ‘“‘which it is safe to make about 
the dependent poor is that they are poor. Devotion to 
ideals, heroic sacrifice, stern self-denial, unflagging per- 
sistence and whatever other virtue you choose to name, 
are to be found among the poor, and a full assortment of 
the common failings of the race is theirs also. The dif- 
ferentiating factors are economic rather than moral, or 
religious, social rather than personal, accidental and re- 


1See Stockton Raymond, “Case Work and Industrial Standards,” 
pp. 394-400, Proceedings, National Conference of Social Work, 46th. ses- 
sion (1919). See also Fred Johnson, “Unemployment from the Angle of 
Case Work,” The Survey, Vol. XXXV, pp. 162-163 (1915). 


416 CHARITY ORGANIZATIGN MOVEMENT 


mediable rather than fundamental.” 1 The new view holds 
that the poor as a class are the moral equals of the rich 
as a Class.” 

It should be borne in mind that the direct connection 
between bad economic and social conditions and poverty 
was first seen mainly by the leaders in the charity or- 
ganization movement, those who could see the forest in 
spite of the trees. The close connection apparently has 
not been appreciated by many who contribute financially 
to the movement, nor by some of the rank and file. 

Because sometimes, though not always, or even a ma- 
jority of times, certain personal qualities necessary for 
success are lacking in clients, family case workers do 

not lose sight of the so-called ‘‘character element” in 
treatment. To undermine self-reliance, to pauperize, is 
still the unpardonable sin in family case work. 

The renaissance of case work also brought with it a 
growing appreciation of the modifications of methods nec- 
essary when working with groups with differing racial 
backgrounds. A more careful study of the psychology of 
the immigrant and an appreciation of his cultural contri- 
butions to America, characterizes the newer and better 
standards of case work to-day. This has been made the 
more necessary, as it was in the nineties, that the tide of 
immigration definitely shifted from northwest to south 
and southeastern Europe. The results of this change be- 
gan to affect case workers during the years under review. 
Good case work with peoples least like ourselves requires 
special aptitudes and training. 

The causes of the improvement in the technique of so- 
cial diagnosis just noted are threefold. First, the develop- 


*Edward T. Devine, “Social Forces,’ Charities and the Commons, Vol. 
XXI, p. 141 (1908). 

*At a meeting held in New York City under the auspices of the 
Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, October 16, 1913, Dr. 
Richard C. Cabot of the Massachusetts General Hospital declared that 
judging from his field of observation, if any comparison could be made 
in regard to the morality of the rich and poor, the comparison would 
be favorable to the poor. 


THE RENAISSANCE OF ‘SOCIAL CASE WORK 417 


ment of those sciences which throw light on problems of 
human behavior, notably Economics, Sociology, Biology, 
and especially, Psychology. Important additions were 
made to the body of knowledge in each of these related 
fields just before or during the years here surveyed. 

Especially important for purposes of social diagnosis 
has been the change in methodology of studying the so- 
called causes of poverty. The case counting method has 
been abandoned. The vitiating personal equation, largely 
ignored in the earlier methods, is now reduced to a mini- 
mum. Instead of listing “‘causes” in the order of their 
importance, the more scientific phrases, “adverse con- 
ditions present” or “problems presented” are used.? 

Second, the intersection of social movements. The de- 
velopment of a number of distinct movements, each for 
the elimination of a specific evil, such as bad housing, 
tuberculosis, vice, overwork, etc., has opened the eyes 
of an army of case workers to the part these evils play 
in pushing families over the poverty line or out of social 
adjustment. After all, case workers, in common with 
others, see what has been most forcibly brought to their 
attention. 

Third, research in the field of case work. The new 
contributions of the sciences just noted and the implica- 
tions of the interrelations of social movements would have 
remained largely unutilized by social workers had it not 
been for the research of those primarily interested in 
case work. The studies and researches of the Charity 
Organization Department of the Russell Sage Founda- 
tion, culminating in the publication of Social Diagnosis, 
by Mary E. Richmond, and of the Social Work Series 
under her editorship, is illustrative. Such research has 
been further enriched by contributions from the technical 
training schools of social work. 

Of the principles with which the movement began, none 
*See Lilian Brandt, “The Causes of Poverty,” Political Science Quar- 


terly, Vol. XXIII (1908). See also Edward T. Devine, ‘Misery and 
Its Causes” (1913). 


418 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


has received greater emphasis during this period than 
that of volunteer service. One might almost say that 
the last decade has witnessed the rediscovery of the vol- 
unteer. -For a while emphasis was placed on the pro- 
fessional paid worker. This was necessary to establish 
standards of work. It, however, has become increasingly 
clear that while the professional worker is an essential, 
there is constant need for the services of trained volun- 
teers. This is true not only because of the amount of 
work to be done but also because, as has been pointed 
out,' a volunteer can often render services which the pro- 
fessional cannot, and each volunteer, trained in the stand- 
ards of good case work, is a center from which radiate 
forces intelligently moulding public opinion. This should 
not be taken to mean that in many places, as great use 
of volunteers has been made as is possible or that there 
has not been great dissatisfaction with the status of that 
form of volunteer service known as friendly visiting. 
This has been true even in cities with societies of the 
oldest standing.” It is fair, however, to say that even 
where this distrust is found, there is still faith in the pos- 
sibilities of friendly visiting. The passing of the years 
has seemed to indicate that a corps of effective visitors 
can be developed wherever the problem has been intel- 
ligently and energetically attacked, with perseverance 
and patience. 

In addition to improvements in the work of charity 
Organization societies for their clients, certain improve- 
ments in internal operation and relationship to the public 
should be noted. The Exchange Branch, a group of 

*See pp. 148, 140. 

*See Porter R. Lee, “A Visitor to the Boston Visitors,” Charities and 
the Commons, Vol. XVI, p. 589 (1906). See also the Thirty-third 
Annual Report, Brooklyn Bureau of Charities, p. 37 (1912). 

*This has led in Chicago to the organization recently of a group of 
Good Neighbors in connection with the work of Lower North District 
of the United Charities. It has the advantage of the democratic and 
natural relationship found in the Block Workers of the Social Unit of 


Cincinnati. See Mrs. John J. O’Conner, “Tapping New Reservoirs,” 
The Survey, Vol. XXXIX, pp. 655-656 (1918). 


THE RENAISSANCE OF “SOCIAL CASE WORK A419 


twenty-four charity organization societies banded to- 
gether to exchange monthly forms, the Financial Ex- 
change, for the interchange of financial methods and 
results, the Charity Organization Department of the Rus- 
sell Sage Foundation and the American Association 
for Organizing Family Social Work, have each in 
turn or jointly during the past fifteen years, greatly 
improved the office management of charity organization 
societies, including methods of record keeping and sta- 
tistics.? 

Almost equally marked improvement is to be noted in 
the matter of publicity. The older scrappy types of an- 
nual reports have in the main been replaced by ones of 
‘greater attractiveness and educational value, while cer- 
tain societies have endeavored with considerable success 
to popularize through exhibits and bulletins the gospel 
of social case work. 


THE WoRK OF CHARITIES ENDORSEMENT 


A concomitant of any system of private benevolence 
is usually a certain amount of imposition on the charitably 
inclined by persons and agencies that masquerade behind 
the name of charity. Gross inefficiency and misdirected 
energy, as well as fraud, create the need for a piece of 
social machinery which can help transmute benevolence 
into beneficence. This is the function of “charities en- 
dorsement”’ which, though it had its origin earlier, has 
had its main development ‘in the last two decades. It is 
not surprising that the giving public should have first 
looked to charity organization societies to render this 
service. In 1897 the New York Society engaged a special 
agent whose sole duty was to supply to inquirers confiden- 
tial reports regarding any particular charitable enter- 
prise. The work is still carried on by the Society through 

*See especially Charity Organization Statistics, Report of the Com- 


mittee on Statistics of the American Association of Societies for Organ- 
izing Charity (1915). 


420 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


its Bureau of Advice and Information which stands ready 
to “furnish upon request a detailed and confidential re- 
port regarding any charity in the city.” More recently 
this Bureau arranged to extend its service to the mem- 
bers of the Merchants’ Association, one of the more in- 
fluential and active commercial bodies in the city. The 
thirty-five hundred business houses on its rolls form a 
large percentage of the contributors to charity in New 
York. These contributors, together with the 7,000 sub- 
scribers to the Charity Organization Society, make a 
nucleus of an interested body of contributors of consid- 
erable size and influence. 

In 1914-15 the Bureau of the New York Society put 
into operation a novel plan which provides for the gratui- 
tous auditing of the accounts of any of the city’s 2,000 
charitable organizations which desire it.1 The work of 
auditing is done by the students of the School of Com- 
merce, Accounts and Finance of New York University, 
as part of their university work. The value of this co- 
operative plan to both the Society and the University, 
whose students receive practical work in accounting, has 
been such that it has been copied by the School of Com- 
merce of the University of Denver and by the University 
of Pittsburgh. 

In Chicago, where charities endorsement was early de- 
veloped, the work was, for a number of years, under- 
taken by the Bureau of Charities, until transferred by it, 
in 1911, to the local Association of Commerce. Still 
other cities, as in Boston, began with and continue using 
a special committee of the local charity organization 
society to furnish information about its local charities. 

In a number of places the feeling soon developed that 
it was unwise and illogical, to place upon the shoulders 
of one social agency the responsibility for passing judg- 
ment on its sister agencies. The practice of charities 

*At present fully one-third of the 2000 institutions do not have 


their accounts audited by certified public accountants, their plea being 
that their funds are not sufficient to warrant this expenditure. 


THE RENAISSANCE OF. SOCIAL CASE WORK 421 


endorsement by a non-charitable body was first instituted 
in Cleveland, where the custom had grown up among 
some of the social agencies of hiring successful collection 
agents and giving them, in some instances, exorbitant 
commissions. By z901 the Chamber of Commerce, inter- 
ested in the increasing demands which were being made 
on local business men for charitable contributions, ap- 
pointed a committee of ten, on benevolent associations. 
The Chamber of Commerce immediately followed up 
the work of its committee by conducting an investigation 
of the character of the work done by the various benevo- 
lent institutions of the city. To those that it considered 
legitimate it supplied certificates of approval, and mem- 
bers confined their: contributions to institutions having 
such certificates. The interest thus manifested by the 
Cleveland Chamber of Commerce in the work of the local 
charities has had, as will be seen, a marked influence on 
the subsequent charitable development of the city.? 
Since 1g9o1 the principle of charities endorsement has 
been adopted in a number of communities. By 1910 Cin- 
cinnati, Cleveland, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Lincoln, 
Los Angeles,” Milwaukee, Omaha, Peoria, Pittsburgh, San 
Francisco, Seattle, Wheeling, Worcester and Youngstown 
had endorsement bureaus, managed wholly or in part by 
commercial organizations, while many other cities had 


*Speaking editorially of the work of charities endorsement of the 
Chamber of Commerce, Charities and the Commons (Vol. XXI, p. 957, 
1909) says, “So effective has been its work that not only members of 
the Chamber but the whole community relies upon it. Without its 
card, an organization cannot raise funds sufficient for maintenance. The 
supervision of the committee is continuous and has been a strong factor 
in increasing the efficiency of charity work.” 

Writing in 1911, Mr. Francis H. McLean adds, the Cleveland Asso- 
ciated Charities and the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce have already 
furthered “such a degree of common understanding among the many 
organizations in Cleveland that the whole social fabric reveals a closer 
union of work and effort than in probably any other city of its size.” 
The Survey, Vol. XXVI, pp. 745, 746 (1911). For further developments 
see pp. 429-433 of the present study. 

*In Los Angeles the Municipal Charities Commission conducts the 
investigation and endorsement of local philanthropic agencies. See 
Anon., The Survey, Vol. XXXI, pp. 1-2 (1913). 


422 CHARITY ORGANIZATION: MOVEMENT 


the subject under consideration.!| Through the efforts of 
the Buffalo Society, the local Chamber of Commerce 
created, in 1911, a Committee on Supervision of Local 
Charities and Survey of Social and Industrial Condi- 
tions, and engaged a special secretary to take charge of 
the work. In 1912 the Denver Chamber of Commerce 
created a Charities Endorsement .Committee modeled 
after similar committees in the large eastern cities. 
“Charities Endorsement as a function of commercial or- 
ganizations” was a brand new topic at the 1913 meeting 
of the National Conference of Charities and Correction. 
The last of the metropolitan cities to establish an endorse- 
ment committee was Philadelphia, when, in 1915, the 
local Chamber of Commerce established a Charities 
Bureau in charge of a full-time secretary. With the 
advent of a Welfare Federation in Philadelphia this func- 
tion was transferred to the new organization. 


CoMMUNITY PLANNING IN SOCIAL WORK 


The great and growing number of unrelated private 
social agencies in the larger cities of the country char- 
acterizing the past twenty years of social work in Amer- 
ica,” has presented a problem which many communities 
are trying to solve by one method or another. The his- 
tory of these efforts to solve the individualistic alignment 
of social agencies and to introduce community planning in 
social work will some day be written. Its beginnings are, 
however, so intertwined with the charity organization 
movement that some brief mention of it must here be 
made. 

When social work was largely an undifferentiated field - 
and largely limited to social case work, there was ob- 


*See special report on Charities Endorsement to the Executive Com- 
mittee of the Association of Commerce of Chicago (1910). 

*See Mary E. Richmond, “Philadelphia Charities: Their Activities and 
Needs,” Charities, Vol. XI, p. 240 (1903). 


THE RENAISSANCE OF SOCIAL CASE WORK 423 


viously less need of a central body reviewing the general 
situation in the social field and planning for community 
improvements and new lines of work. Not only the multi- 
plication of social agencies, but also the gradual realiza- 
tion that the family rather than the community is and is 
going to be increasingly the unit of work of charity or- 
ganization societies has called for some new means of co- 
ordinating all the social forces of a community. There 
was an earlier period in the history of the movement as 
has been seen when charity organization societies assumed 
more or less consciously that they were responsible to a 
large degree for community organization and for practical 
leadership in movements for the improvement of social 
conditions. The need of more thorough work in the field 
of family welfare and the general social awakening pro- 
viding new workers for the field of community organiza- 
tion has led to this important division of labor. 

For some time the conviction had been growing that 
social agencies must do more than was right in its own 
eyes, in other words, that they owed obligations to others 
working in the same field.t. The budding professional 
consciousness of social workers, coupled with a groping 
desire to view the general situation in the social field, had 
already led to the organization of social workers’ clubs in 
Boston and New York, at whose meetings many com- 
munity problems were discussed. Even before this the 
seed for community thinking and planning had been 
planted by the general conferences organized in many 
places by the local charity organization society as in the 
case of the Assembly, organized by the Philadelphia So- 
ciety early in the history of the movement.” Later con- 
ferences under more general auspices came into being. 
As early as 1901 a number of social workers of St. Louis 


*Mary E. Richmond, “Some Methods of Charitable Co-operation,” 
- Charities, Vol. VII, p. 196 (1901). 

*See pp. 191, 192. See also Francis H. McLean, Charity Organization 
| Field Work, a pamphlet published by the National Association of 
Societies for Organizing Charity, pp. 22-23 (1910). 


424 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


organized with good results a monthly conference for 
mutual instruction as to the charitable resources of the 
city and for the promotion of further codperation.* 

In 1908, largely through the efforts of the local Asso- 
ciated Charities, the Charity Conference Committee of 
Los Angeles (later Los Angeles Conference of Social 
Workers) was organized to coordinate the efforts of the 
different charitable societies and institutions of the city. 
As a monthly forum for the discussion of community 
problems it was of great value. It led to the creation 
of a Municipal Charities Commission, to which reference 
has been made. . 


Tue City CONFERENCE PLAN 


In 1910 the New York City Conference of Charities 
and Correction was organized.? It is open to all who 
are officially connected with public or private charitable 
or correctional work in New York City or who take an 
active interest therein. No membership fee is charged, 
the expenses being met by voluntary contributions. Con- 
vening annually since 1910, it has proven of great service 
in working out community programs. That the confer- 
ence has not proven superfluous is attested by the fact 
that “probably 95 per cent of those attending the three 
days’ session rarely, if ever, attend a state or national 
conference.” 2 From New York the City Conference 
idea has spread to other cities. In spite of the possi- 
bilities of the general conference it is not well adapted 
to the needs of smaller communities. ‘They sufficed in 
the large cities,’ writes Mr. McLean, ‘‘because there were 
other general agencies also interested in social progress, 


*See Anon., Charities, Vol. VII, p. 347 (1901) and Vol. XIII, p. 478 
(1904). 

“In 1889 the Charity Organization Society of Baltimore had organized 
a two-days’ conference on local charities. Subjects pertaining to the 
prevention of pauperism and crime were discussed. The conference did 
not, however, develop into an annual institution as in New York City. 

*See Anon.,. The Survey, Vol, XXXIV, p. 253 (1915). 


THE RENAISSANCE OF SOCIAL CASE WORK 425 


and it would have been, and is, exceedingly dangerous for 
any one to pretend to map out a social program in its 
entirety under such conditions.” ! 


THE CENTRAL CoUNCIL oF SoctAL AGENCIES 


The form of organization for group action by social 
agencies that seems destined to commend itself, especially 
to communities in which there is considerable develop- 
ment of organized activity friendly but unrelated, is the 
central council of social agencies, a delegate body repre- 
senting the social agencies of a city, these agencies still 
maintaining independence of action in all fields and being 
bound together by codperative rather than contractual 
relationships. The delegates are therefore armed with 
advisory and influencing powers only, and have no direct 
administrative sphere excepting as concerns its own in- 
ternal affairs.2 Such a body could well work out a social 
chart or goal of community endeavor. It ‘might plan 
the social program on the basis of joint action in public 
reforms, and on the basis of morally influencing particu- 
lar organizations to undertake particular activities, or en- 
couraging the growth of new societies whenever 
required.” ® 

The Central Council idea * had its inception at the time 
of the launching of the Pittsburgh Associated Charities in 
1908. As has been said, a number of social agencies of 
the city united to form an Associated Charities to be 
financed by them jointly. Each member organization 
also appointed a delegate to a Central Council which in 


*Francis H. McLean, Charity Organization Field Work, published by 
the National Association of Societies for Organizing Charity, p. 23 
(1910). 

*The Central Council idea should not be confused with the discredited 
plan of organization, known as the St. Paul plan, see p. 243. 

*Francis H. McLean, Charity Organization Field Work, published by 
the National Association of Societies for Organizing Charity, pp. 24-25 
(1910). 

“The idea seems to have originated with Mr. Francis H. McLean, who 
has done more than any one else to foster its development. 


426 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


turn named ten of the twenty-one members of the Board 
of Trustees of the newly created “A. C.” This latter 
relationship between the Council and the Associated 
Charities proved unfortunate for reasons already stated 4 
and was later terminated. The Council as a Council, 
however, soon carried on remarkably successful educa- 
tional campaigns in the child welfare and public health 
fields. The Central Council, later operated by the Asso- 
ciated Charities as an open forum for the discussion of 
social problems of common interest to the social agencies 
of the city, though pointing the way for other cities to 
strive towards unity of purpose and combined plans, was 
destined to become virtually a city conference. 

The spread of the central council idea, perfected by 
one bit of experience after another, has since been rapid. 
Milwaukee organized a Council in 1909. Beside creating 
a number of needed social agencies, it was responsible for 
the reorganization of the local Associated Charities upon 
a modern basis. A Central Council was soon after or- 
ganized in Rochester, New York, where the council occu- 
pies the peculiar position of being the executive board 
of the United Charities, electing the executive committee 
which manages this society’s work. The Central Philan- 
thropic Council of Columbus was organized in rgto after 
a survey made by Francis H. McLean, at that time field 
secretary of the Charity Organization Department of the 
Russell Sage Foundation. As is more usual, the local 
charity organization society became, without compensa- 
tion, general-secretary of the Council.2 St. Louis, the 
first of the metropolitan cities to organize, followed 
in 1911 on a plan also drafted by Mr. McLean. It 
made, in 1916, under his direction as general-secretary 
of the American Association of Societies for Organizing 


*See p. 343. 

*With the exception of Milwaukee which employed the general- 
secretary of the local Associated Charities on half time the Councils had 
in their beginnings no paid service. The employment of paid full-time 
secretaries has been a later development. 


THE RENAISSANCE OF SOCIAL CASE WORK 427 


Charity, a most comprehensive survey of public and pri- 
vate social agencies, resulting in a genuine interest in 
standards of work among the social agencies of the 
city. 

Councils followed in Cincinnati, Portland, Oregon; and 
Seattle, Washington. In the last two, the Councils did 
not long remain active as Councils, the one in Seattle 
assuming more the nature of a city conference. The 
Council in Cincinnati, along with accomplishing many 
things associated with Central Councils, fostered con- 
tractual relationships by arranging for joint money-rais- 
ing for a number of its larger organizations and so also 
partakes somewhat of the nature of a Financial Federa- 
tion to which reference will shortly be made. | 

Chicago was the next metropolitan city to organize an 
active non-contractual council. Through informal case 
conferences for case work societies, it emphasized at the 
start the importance of systematic attempts to develop 
better standards and methods of work in the fields of 
family and child welfare. Minneapolis, after the repeated 
urgings of the general-secretary of local Associated Char- 
ities, organized a Council in 1913. It, together with the 
Springfield Conference, as it is called, organized soon 
after as a direct result of the Springfield Survey,” concen- 
trated on developing standards of work as its first task. 
The first Council of any strength in a community of less 
than 50,000 population was organized in Columbia, S. C. 
More recently Councils have been organized in St. Paul, 
- Minn., and East St. Louis.* In practically all instances, 
as has been seen, the movement for some such coodrdinat- 
ing body in the field of community planning as a Central 
Council had its origin in the charity organization move- 


”? 


*See Anon., ey Louis Self-Survey of Social Service,’ The Survey, 
Vol. XX XVII, p. 493 (10917). 
- 7A survey of ae charities of the city made under the direction of the 
American Association of Societies for Organizing Charity. 

* This is not an exhaustive list of Councils. It includes the more im- 
portant and active ones. Councils have been started in several other 


places but to date appear to be largely paper organizations only. 


428 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


ment, either nationally or locally. That this should have 
been so is the logical result of the tendency already noted 
for family welfare societies to stress community responsi- 
bility for community problems and to concentrate increas- 
ingly on the job of raising standards in the narrower field 
of family social work. 


FINANCIAL FEDERATION 


Central Councils of Social Agencies, as has just been 
seen, in the main came into being to develop an esprit 
de corps among social agencies that would result in higher 
standards of work for each, the elimination of duplicating ~ 
efforts and the meeting of community needs either not 
met, or at best inadequately met. The problem of the ade- 
quate financing of social work and the evil of the inbreed- 
ing of support, play little or no part in their program. 
To meet these problems, or problem, since they are largely 
inseparable, federations of finance bearing one title or 
another, but all providing for a joint collection of funds, 
have gradually evolved in a number of cities. 

The first of these, that of Denver, Colorado, ante- 
dates the period of history covered by this chapter.2 : 
With this exception, and an experiment by the Washing- 
ton Society,? the movement for joint financing has fallen 
within the period since 1t905.* The forerunner of the 
present movement for joint financing was Elmira, N. Y., 
where, in 1906, as already described, the churches, char- 
ities and missions of the town organized a society, since 
known as the Federation for Social Service, for investi- 
gation and codperation in aiding the poor of the city.* 


*See pp. 240-243. 

*The experiment was along the lines of co- operaiere financing. A 
joint committee representing the Associated Charities, the Citizens’ Relief 
Association and the Committee on Prevention of Consumption sent out 
13,000 appeals personally addressed. See Francis H. McLean, “Or- 
ganized Charity,” Charities and the Commons, Vol. XIX, p. 1271 (1907). 

*The Financial Federation plan has since 1900 been a characteristic 
of Jewish Philanthropy in America. They have been pioneers in the 
field. See Boris D. Bogen, “Jewish Philanthropy” (1917). 

*See pp. 401, 402 for a further description of this federation. 


THE RENAISSANCE OF SOCIAL CASE WORK 429 


THE CLEVELAND FEDERATION FOR CHARITY AND 
PHILANTHROPY 2 


Although various motives led to the organization, in 
1913 of The Cleveland Federation for Charity and Phi- 
lanthropy, the main purpose of this first of the larger 
existing Federations was to secure, in an efficient manner, 
adequate financial support for the various social agencies 
of the city which, including the Associated Charities, had 
for some time experienced increasing difficulty in securing 
funds for maintaining, much less developing, their work. 
The charities endorsement work of the city had been in- 
‘stituted by the committee on benevolent associations of 
the Chamber of Commerce in 1900. In 1908 the com- 
mittee had made a careful investigation of the whole of 
the city’s giving during the year 1907, and in 1910 a 
similar study of the whole situation for 1909.2 The 
suggestions of the committee, based on the conclusions of 
these studies and on its experience as the charities. en- 
dorsement agency of the city, led to the establishment 
of the aforementioned Federation for Charity and Philan- 
thropy to participation in which any organization is 
eligible which makes to the citizens of Cleveland, without 
restriction to religious, denominational or other special 
affiliation, a legitimate appeal for funds with which to 
further its activities. 

Federation subscribers were not to be solicited for 
current expenses by any of the organizations in the Fed- 


*The name is now Welfare Federation of Cleveland. 

?It was found in 10909 that seventy-three institutions were attacking 
the problem of social betterment from almost every possible angle. They 
owned endowments worth nearly $4,000,000. They were taking the full 
time of several hundred people and were calling for the annual expendi- 
ture of one and one-half millions of dollars—a sum equal to $3 for every 
man, woman and child of Cleveland. They were asking each year for 
direct contributions of about $1 per citizen, or roughly $650,000. It was 
further found that that sum was contributed by but 5,386 persons or 
less than 1% of Cleveland’s population. Of this number six people were 
giving 42%; 54 people were giving 55%; 253 persons were giving nearly 
three-fourths of all the money contributed. See footnote p. 240 for 
Similar findings in Liverpool in 1873. 


430 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


eration. Current expenses only were solicited by the 
Federation; before soliciting funds for other needs, fed- 
erated organizations were expected to consult with the 
Federation Board. Gifts for such needs were forwarded 
by the Federation on request. Gifts were forwarded in 
line with designation of givers to any Cleveland organiza- 
tion, whether listed as a member of the Federation or 
not. 

Briefly stated, the Federation became “an alliance of 
fifty-three of the city’s social organizations to collect all 
funds for the current expenses of the fifty-three institu- 
tions by means of one central board rather than through 
individual organizations; to put into use each year the 
$30,000 to $60,000 which is now spent in making fifty- 
three collections where henceforth only one will be neces- 
sary; to enable officers of organizations to devote to 
actual work time now devoted to securing funds; to free 
benevolent donors, by one collection, the annoyance of 
incessant demands for small amounts; to double or triple, 
through educational campaigns, the number of the city’s 
givers to charity; and to cause fifty-three little skirmish- 
ing bands of out-fighters to bury their differences, unite 
their interests and sympathies, and present a solid front 
to the problems of the community.” 4 

The year following (1914) Cleveland took a further 
step toward consolidating its social agencies by uniting 
practically all the welfare organizations, both public and 
private, of the city, under. the name of the Cleveland 
Welfare Council. The purpose of this federation of fed- 


*Anon., “Put the ‘Cleave’ in ‘Cleaveland,’” The Survey, Vol. XXX, 
P. 447 (1913). 

7 Regular membership in the council was of organizations or institu- 
tions. The initial members include the following: Chamber of Com- 
merce, Federation for Charity and Philanthropy, Cleveland Foundation, 
Federated Churches, Federation of Women’s Clubs, Catholic Diocese, 
Academy of Medicine, Western Reserve University, Case School of 
Applied Science, Federation of Jewish Charities, City Club, Civic League 
and Chamber of Industry. 

Ex officio members were the following named officers or their repre- 
sentatives: Judge of Juvenile Court, presiding judge of the Common 


THE RENAISSANCE OF SOCIAL CASE WORK 431 


erations was to provide clearing-house facilities through 
discussion, committees, files of social data and the like, 
for the interchange of information, ideas and plans rela- 
tive to community welfare, with a view to preventing 
duplicated or unrelated efforts on the part of social 
agencies or individuals and to recommending to proper 
agencies or individuals needed welfare activities. 

In 1916 the Cleveland Welfare Council and the Cleve- 
land Federation for Charity and Philanthropy merged 
into a new all-comprehensive organization entitled the 
Cleveland Welfare Federation. To the fifty-seven fed- 
erated organizations, including most of the voluntary 
philanthropies of Cleveland making a general appeal for 
funds, were thus added practically all agencies, public 
and private, philanthropic, charitable, civic or semi-civic, 
interested in the common welfare. 

The new body has a general board made up of two 

delegates chosen by each constituent agency. These dele- 
gates represent both board members and givers and paid 
workers. This body holds quarterly meetings for the 
discussion of policies, improved methods and new move- 
ments, and is a sort of town-meeting assembly for social 
service matters. At its annual meeting this general board 
elects twenty-four trustees of the Welfare Federation, 
one-third of whose terms expire each year. In addition, 
six are elected by the trustees themselves. These thirty 
trustees are responsible for the work of the federation, 
which is carried on through the paid office staff and com- 
mittees. These details are here given for Cleveland, as 
the methods of appointment in the different federations, 
though varying somewhat, are built on this general 
principle. 
Pleas Court, judge of Probate Court, chief justice of Municipal Court, 
the mayor, the director of public welfare, the commissioner of research 
‘and publicity, the director of schools, superintendent of schools, the 
‘president of the Board of Education, the public librarian and the state 
factory inspector. 


The executive committee had power to elect, in addition, ten repre- 
sentatives at large to serve for a period of one year. 


432 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


_ This Cleveland plan has brought to light some signifi- 
cant features of charity giving. First, the federation plan 
tends to make a person’s gifts larger than the aggregate 
of his gifts to the separate organizations; second, it 
reaches persons who have never contributed to any social 
agency; third, the cost of collecting is materially less; and 
fourth, it is possible, through combined efforts, to give a 
more thorough-going course in social education.2 The 
first of these facts is demonstrated when one compares 
the subscriptions received by the Federation for Charity 
and Philanthropy in 1913 with the gifts made by the 
same persons in 1912. ‘Those who gave $126,735 in 
IgI2 gave in 1913 directly and by Federation sub- 
scription blanks, $199,614, a gain of 57.5 per cent.® 
The total contributions for the third year showed an 
increase of $100,000 over the year before. The second 
point is demonstrated by the addition of over 5,000 new 
givers in the first two and a half years of its existence.* 

Although the Cleveland plan owes its origin to the need 
on the part of social agencies for adequate and steady 
income on the one hand, and the desire of business men 
to be free from the importunities of countless solicitors on 
the other, the Federation workers, almost from the be- 
ginning, seemed to believe the real organizing principle 
of the so-called financial federation to be ‘a thorough- 
going plan of codperation between the recognized social 
agencies of a given community in their entire program, 


*“Nearly everyone thinks he is giving more to charity than he 
really is.” Anon., “Put the ‘Cleave’ in ‘Cleaveland,’” The Survey, Vol. 
AXX, p. 448 (1913). 

2“Separately the organizations could not do it; together they can. A 
single organization could scarcely afford to carry on such a campaign 
because it would have no assurance that all or even a large part of the 
returns would come into its own coffers. Other agencies, which had not 
helped in the education, would share the benefit. The federation, how- 
ever, may do it with the certainty that every ounce of energy it puts 
forth in quickening the community conscience will come back to it in 
dollars.” Jbid., p. 448. 

*See the “Social Year Book,” published by The Cleveland Federation 
for Charity and Philanthropy, p. 15 (1913). 

*Anon., “Charity Federation and Its Fruits,’ The Survey, Vol. 
XXXVI, p. 188 (1916). 


THE RENAISSANCE OF SOCIAL CASE WORK 433 


financial, educational and social.” + Accordingly, con- 
ferences have been held for developing higher standards 
of practice in common problems; studies have been di- 
rected toward the elimination of difficulties presented by 
such problems as immigration and vagrancy. A commit- 
tee on methods and cooperation ‘‘to study constituent 
agencies, codperate with them, develop standards and cor- 
relate activities” was organized with the assistant secre- 
tary of the Federation, a former charity organization 
worker, as chairman. 

The Cleveland experiment, differing from other pre- 
vious plans involving the principle of a joint appeal for 
funds,” is thus more than a fiscal enterprise in that it 
regards as fundamental the tenet “that action should be 
based on a knowledge of facts and conditions. This 
procedure is to secure as accurate knowledge as possible 
of community plans and problems and work that needs 
to be done, also to get the facts about the agencies and 
resources that are available to do the work.” ? In short, 
the Cleveland plan aims to have the whole community 
“pool all its resources of time, energy, intelligence, vision, 
sentiment and inspiration in the attempt to solve the prob- 
lem of human welfare” * in the city of to-day.® 


* Roscoe C. Edlund, “‘The Social Service of a Federation,” Proceedings, 
National Conference of Social Work, 46th session, p. 717 (1919). 

*“The plan proposed differs in essential points from any devised or 
practiced in any other city. It is not a federation of institutions alone, 
as in Denver; not of givers alone, nor of both together. It is a federa- 
tion for advancing charity and philanthropy, of institutions of givers 
and of citizens. It does not intend to be a mere collecting agency, as is 
the Liverpool project, though it does not wish to assume to direct gifts 
to this or that work until it has had at least two years of experience, 
and then only on the request of the individual contributor. It hopes to 
‘produce its results in the way of a wiser distribution mainly through a 
‘better educated giver, rather than through its own action.” C. W. 
| i “Clevéland’s Group Plan,” The Survey, Vol. XXIX, p. 606 

1913) 
__*Sherman C. Kingsley, “War Chests in Peace Times,” The Survey, 
Vol. XLII, p. 345, (1919). 
ie * The “Social Year Book,” p. 20 (1913), published by The Cleveland 
Federation for Charity and Bhilanrep 
' %“Federation workers are no more interested in finances detached from 
‘the vital work of the social service field than is a case committee of a 


A34 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


The movement for federating charitable agencies soon 
spread to other sections of the country. By June, 1916, 
no less than eleven cities had financial federations.* 
Among the most successful of these were the Council of 
Social Agencies in Cincinnati; the Erie Social Service 
Federation, formed in 1914, comprising all of the lead- 
ing charities of the city; the Baltimore Alliance of Char- 
itable and Social Agencies, formed in 1915, with eleven 
constituent societies, and the General Welfare Asso- 
ciation of Oshkosh. The common experience in each 
of the four communities was that a single annual cam- 
paign for money was more remunerative than all the 
separate campaigns conducted by the various societies put 
together.” In 1913, when Cleveland adopted the federa- 
tion plan, Denver, where twenty-five years earlier a fed- 
eration had been organized which for various reasons had 
failed to live up to its possibilities, took new courage, 
and shortly thereafter reorganized her federation on a 
more modern basis. Several years later a full-time secre- 
tary, experienced in federation work, was employed for 
the first time. Since then the Federation has been grow- 
ing in public favor and influence. In the past few years 
the federation movement has gained new recruits in both 


C. O. S. interested exclusively in material relief.’.—Sherman C. Kingsley, 
“War Chests in Peace Times,” The Survey, Vol. XLII, p. 344 (1919). 

It was declared of the plan by one of its promoters that it would be 
a failure: 

“rt. If it does not raise more money; 

2. If it diminishes the personal quality in charity, even though twice 
as much money is raised; 

3. If the Federation does not have the courage to divert money to 
work where it is greatly needed and fails to persuade organizations to 
abandon fields better covered by others; 

4. If it fails to build up weak organizations whose work gives pros- 
pect of service to the community; 

5. If it does not stimulate new organizations to meet new needs.” See 
C. W. Williams, Cleveland’s “Group Plan,” The Survey, Vol. XXIX, 
p. 603 (1913). 

* Four other cities had abandoned federations once begun. The above 
list of eleven cities mentioned as having Charity Federations does not 
include cities in which the Jewish Charities have been federated. 

*Anon., “Charity Federation and Its Fruits,” The Survey, Vol. 
XXXVI, p. 187 (1916). 


THE RENAISSANCE OF SOCIAL CASE WORK 435 


smaller and larger communities, the most noteworthy of 
the latter being Grand Rapids, Mich., and Philadelphia. 
The Cincinnati Council of Social Agencies undertook 
as one of its first activities a survey of all contributions 
to philanthropy offering its information and advice to all 
large and prospective givers, permanent endowments, me- 
morials or legacies. It was in 1915 but a step from this 
to conducting the campaign for a joint collection of funds 
for a number of important agencies to which reference 
has been made. More recently the Central Council of 
Social Agencies of Minneapolis became a participating 
member of a Town Tea Kettle, a form of joint collection 
of funds. Since then St. Paul has organized a Community 
Chest as the result of a six months’ investigation of a 
joint committee representing the St. Paul Association of 
Public and Business Affairs and the Central Council of 
Social Agencies. As has just been seen, the Cleveland 
Federation soon found the making of budgets and the 
planning of work with emphasis on community needs and 
standards of work an essential of federation practice. For 
this reason the Federation in Grand Rapids has added 
an advisory council, consisting of two representatives of 
each agency in the Federation, one of whom is required 
by the by-laws to be an executive officer of the agency 
and the other a member of the administrative staff, but 
not a trustee. Still more recently the Welfare Federation 
of Philadelphia has organized a Council of Social Agen- 
Cies as an essential part of its work. It would thus seem 
that financial federation tends towards functional federa- 
tion and in time functional federation to some kind of 
financial federation. At any rate, by 1918, the federation 
movement, though originating from a different motive 
from that of thé movement for central councils of social 
agencies, united with it to the extent of the executives in 
the various federations and central councils organizing 
the American Association for Community Organization 
“to encourage and stimulate collective community plan- 


436 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


ning and the development of better standards in the work 
of community organization.” 

A movement which began for the purpose of bringing 
order out of chaos in the charity of a previous generation 
could not long remain apathetic to a movement such as 
that just discussed, even though unlike the movement for 
central councils of social agencies it had had little or no 
share in its origin which in most places received its im- 
petus from business men. Interest was awakened as one 
charity organization society after another in the various 
federated cities were drawn into the plan. As financial 
federations began to talk less of saving the business 
man from the annoyance of many solicitations and more 
of social planning and standards of workmanship, the 
fears of many charity organization workers grew less.’ 
Although there was varying and independent action taken 
by the family social work societies of the country toward 
the federation movement, the charity organization move- 
ment through its national organization has never been 
enthusiastic over financial federation. Its attitude has 
been rather that of critical “watchful waiting,” appar- 
ently believing that if financial federation is to come it 
should be only after the local social agencies have first 
learned to work together and to develop standards 
through a central council or functional federation. 

*These fears seem to center around (1) the effect of federation on 
standards of workmanship. Are low standard organizations by the mere 
fact of membership in the federation given a standing of respectability 
and a prolonged lease of life? (2) the effect of federation upon new 
forms of social effort in a community. Does an ultra-conservatism lead 
the federation to refuse to admit the proposed new organizations? (3) 
the effect of organized business interests, e. g., Chambers of Commerce 
where they name a certain number of the federation directors. Does 
the business man dictate standards or is he educated by the professional! 
worker? (4) the effect on the contributor’s interest in and knowledge of 
the city’s social work. Are contributors better informed and more 
interested in social work through only one gift a year to charitable 
work? 

7See Financial Federations Report prepared by W. Frank Persons, 


William H. Baldwin, Fred R. Johnson, and Eugene T. Lies, American 
Association for Organizing Charity (1917). 


THE RENAISSANCE OF -SOCIAL CASE WORK 437 


THE WAR AND THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MoOvEMENT 


To one unfamiliar with the recent course of events in 
the charity organization movement the connection be- 
tween it and the war must seem slight indeed, beyond pos- 
sibly increasing the difficulty of raising funds for the day’s 
work due to the vast sums needed for so-called war 
work. Such, however, is far from the facts of the case. 
The American Red Cross, in order to meet the unprece- 
dented situation in this country created by the war, under- 
went vast changes of organization and personnel. The 
country was divided into thirteen districts. Connected 
with the thirteen division offices were no less than five 
hundred regular workers charged with the responsibility 
for organization and supervision. In addition there were 
approximately one hundred workers at the headquarters 
in Washington. Only sixty chapters out of the 3,618, 
representing nearly every county of the United States, 
had no Home Service section. Including sub-divisions, 
Home Service soon counted some 15,000 local branches. 

Because the problems of civilian relief has more points 
in common than of difference, with the problems with 
which family case workers throughout the country had 
long been familiar and because the methods of helping 
to solve many of these family problems differed in few 
essential details from the methods followed in the past 
by the best case-working agencies, scores of charity 
organization workers in all sections of the country, both 
leaders and of the rank and file were ‘“‘drafted” for some 
of the most responsible positions in the Red Cross service. 
This placed a heavy burden on the remaining charity 
organization workers, many. of whom were overworked 
before this wholesale depletion of their ranks took place. 
It, however, afforded those who went a rare educational 
“opportunity to spread the gospel of high standards in 
‘social case work. As the majority of Home Service sec- 
tions were in communities where social work was not pre- 


438 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


viously organized, often Home Service being the only ex- 
isting form of social work, it meant the breaking of much 
new ground, but sowing it with tested seed. A local 
representative of the Red Cross, mindful of the seventeen 
members of the staff of the local charity organization so- 
ciety who had been drafted into Home Service, and of the 
hundred odd members of Red Cross institutes who had 
received their field training in C. O. S. offices, expressed 
informally the situation in the following picturesque 
words: ‘‘Home Service couldn’t have gone fifteen yards 
if it hadn’t been for the charity organization prepared- 
ness all over the country.” 

If Home Service owes much, including its name,” to the 
charity organization movement, family social workers 
are beginning to appreciate an enrichment of the tech- 
nique of social case work from the experiences growing 
out of the war.* The Red Cross spirit of real democracy 
in social service is a priceless heritage. The lessons it has 
taught in what can be done for the industrial cripple 
alone is a gain in this field of treatment that is of great 
and permanent value. 

Shortly after the United States’ entry into the war, the 
American Association of Societies for Organizing Charity 
passed the following resolution covering the relationship 
of its constituent members to the chapters of the Red 
Cross operating in their respective communities: 


“That we believe that the joint collection of money for 
war relief and ordinary agencies is essentially unsound 
and unwise, since it will fail to impress on the community 


*This does not mean that adaptations of the processes of family case 
workers to meet a unique occasion were not necessary. However these 
adaptations were evolutionary in nature. See Mary Willcox Glenn, 
“The Spirit and Deed of Home Service,” The Survey, Vol. XL, pp. 184- 
186 (1918). 

*In an article by Frederic Almy, on “Shall We Scrap Home Service?,” 
the author refers to the name of “home service” as another of Miss 
Richmond’s great contributions to social work. The Survey, Vol. XLII, 
Pp. 893 (1919). 

*Edward T. Devine, “The Future of Home Service,” The Survey, 
Vol. XLII, pp. 861-865 (1919). 


THE RENAISSANCE OF SOCIAL CASE WORK 439 


the need of maintaining all ordinary forms of social serv- 
ice and will leave the social agencies after the war with- 
out any financial clientele of their own, while, on the 
other hand, it is unfair for the social agencies to utilize 
the war sentiment as an easy way of obtaining support 
_ for their work; 

_ “That the societies should place themselves at the serv- 
ice of civilian relief committees in any practical ways 
which do not cripple their own necessary day to day 
_ work; that they should not, however, serve as agents for 
_ these committees, but should insist that such work be 
done under the banner of the Red Cross; 

_ “That the societies should keep in mind that the Red 
_Cross directors have impressed upon their chapters the 
_ fact that Red Cross responsibility is not confined to the 
provision of material relief, but should include the high- 
est type of family planning and personal helpfulness to 
the families of our soldiers and sailors.” 


By 19109 the great bulk of Home Service work as origi- 
nally contemplated was accomplished and the Red Cross 
entered upon its peace-time program. Fortunately, the 
Red Cross consented to extend for a time its Home Serv- 
ice to families of others than soldiers and sailors, but in no 
instance are local chapters permitted to extend Home 
Service to civilian families if other agencies are already 
prepared to render similar service. The American Asso- 
ciation for Organizing Family Social Work as the Ameri- 
can Association of Societies for Organizing Charity was 
rechristened, voted to increase its budget and its staff 
greatly in order to meet this opportunity of reaping where 
it had not sown. In some quarters there was expressed 
the desire that Home Service should permanently replace 
in whole or in part the movement whose history is here 
recorded.: Theoretically, it makes little difference under 
which banner the methods of family social work survive. 
Practically, it would seem, that there is room for good 


*See Frederic Almy, “Shall We Scrap Home Service?” The Survey, 
Vol. XLII, p. 893 (1919). 


440 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


case work all along the line and that the charity organiza- 
tion movement, called by that or any other name or 
names, is needed now, as much as ever before in its 
history. 


A RETROSPECT 


The last decade and a half have been characterized by 
a general interest in social questions that is without 
parallel in America. Although many movements whose 
common watchword is prevention began earlier, it has 
been during the past fifteen years that the movements for 
better housing, the prevention of tuberculosis and the 
abolition of child labor have reached their full strength 
and national proportions. In addition, these fifteen years 
have witnessed the awakening of a new conscience in 
reference to the ancient evil of venereal disease, the de- 
velopment of bureaus of municipal research, the rise of 
mental tests, the establishment of the Federal Children’s 
Bureau, the launching of a national campaign against 
infant mortality, the spread of workmen’s compensation 
and minimum wage legislation and the beginnings of 
legislation for health insurance, the development of Social 
Service Commissions in a number of religious denomina- 
tions, a wider use of the school plant for social purposes, 
and the spread of community centers and community or- 
ganization. Truly this has become the age of the social 
question. Moreover, the multitudes of social workers 
engaged in furthering these various programs have made 
mutual discovery of one another’s existence and have be- 
come aware of one another’s common aims and aspira- 
tions, all of which has definitely influenced the develop- 
ment of the movement, the especial concern of this study. 

The outstanding feature in the history of charity organ- 
ization during the past decade and a half has been a 
renewed interest in the technique of social case work 
which for the first time has been made articulate. The - 
period of history just preceding had seen much inter-— 


THE RENAISSANCE OF SOCIAL CASE WORK 441 


est and energy on the part of a number of societies 
go into campaigns of prevention. Valuable as they were 
in themselves and as a means of catching the public 
interest, they nevertheless made it difficult, for the time, 
to emphasize the need of improving the technique of case 
_ work, though there were not lacking those in the move- 
ment who had a wholesome sense of humility as to the 
quality of their day’s work and readiness for self-examina- 
tion and criticism. The era of smug self-satisfaction, if 
such ever existed, had passed, and a vision of the possi- 
bilities of social case work has replaced it. These pos- 
_ sibilities are now seen to apply to many fields beside 
poverty. The methods first worked out for those below 
the poverty line are to-day applied with modifications to 
all who for one reason or another are unadjusted or 
maladjusted. 

With the professional attitude ieeenny one’s work, which 
accompanies all efforts at improving technique and the 
maintenance of standards, there grew up among the older 
and better established societies, as has been seen, a mis- 
sionary spirit that led to the organization of the National 
Association of Societies for Organizing Charity and that 
aided its work until the increase in the number of so- 
cieties, under one name or another, doing family social 
work to-day in large and small communities throughout 
the length and breadth of the land is without precedent. 
This nationalization of the movement is the second most 
striking characteristic of the period just surveyed. 

The third outstanding feature has been an increasing 
specialization on the part of charity organization so- 
cieties. In countless communities a drawing together 
of local social agencies has been taking place for the 
purpose of community planning. This tendency has 
usually taken the form of a Central Council of Social 
Agencies or of a Welfare Federation. The differen- 
tiation of the field of social work steadily going on for 
the past two decades has made necessary these central 


442 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


bodies for group thinking and community planning. 
This development has in turn made it possible for 
charity organization societies to concentrate on the im- 
mediate task of doing the best piece of social case work 
possible for each individual claiming their services and 
in making case work count in the solution of community 
problems. It has not meant a loss of that interest in pre- 
vention which characterized the period preceding, but a 
larger conception of team work and a willingness to do 
well the more humble but equally necessary task of 
individual adjustment. As a matter of fact, the period 
has been one marked by a clearing of social vision which 
has meant a continuing and deepening interest in move- 
ments whose purpose is to improve social conditions. 
Active participation, however, has been limited mainly to 
the reinterpretation of case work in so far as it reveals the 
social causes of poverty.? 

The enlarging of social vision has brought a new 
view of social relations which has resulted in a change 
in public attitude toward so-called “charity work.” Lady 
Bountiful is less frequently seen and still less frequently 
extolled. Charity organization societies, fearing the impli- 
cations of their name, have been recently adopting a 
variety of titles, all alike in discarding the word “charity.” 
An examination of these shows a definite shift toward 
titles such as ‘Society for Family Social Work,” which 
call attention to the end to be accomplished rather than 
to the charitable motive formerly stressed. This change 
from the subjective to the objective is significant and 
leads to the gateway of that great inclusive field of social 
reconstruction that now lies stretching ahead indefinitely 
on the road of social progress. In the words of Jane 


*An illustration of this is a report made to the Industrial Accident 
Board of Massachusetts in 1913 by the Boston Provident Association, 
containing information based on the study of its own cases as to de- 
pendency arising out of injury to workmen. Other family agencies as 
the Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charity have rendered like 
service in aiding in the passage of Workmen’s Compensation laws. 


THE RENAISSANCE OF SOCIAL CASE WORK 443 


Addams, “the negative policy of relieving destitution or 
even the more generous one of preventing it, is giving 
way to the positive idea of raising life to its highest 
value.” } 


*Jane Addams, “Charity and Social Justice,’ Presidential address at 
the National Conference of Charities and Correction, 37th session, pp. 


2-3 (1910). 


CHAPTER XI 
TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 


It is still a new view that efficiency is as essential in 
the relief and prevention of distress as in any other 
equally important undertaking, and that efforts in the 
field of philanthropy, as in any other field, are to be 
judged in the last analysis by results. In spite of the 
obvious difficulties, if not impossibility, of testing the 
efficiency of an organization, much of whose work does 
not lend itself to statistical analysis, there are certain 
tests which, though limited in application, nevertheless do 
have considerable value as gauges of the efficiency of the 
work in question. 

The tests of efficiency here proposed fall naturally into 
several groups. There are first those which relate to 
the ultimate results accomplished, judged in the light of 
generally accepted objects. The second set of tests relate 
to personnel and includes therein directors, employees, 
and volunteer workers. The third group of tests is con- 
cerned with problems of organization and administration. 

The ultimate tests of the work of a charity organiza- 
tion society are listed first, as it is frequently only in 
the light of the objects to be attained that one can judge 
intelligently of the efficiency of either the personnel or 
the administration of the organization devised to attain 
those objects. 

Methods whose ends are profits and methods whose 
ends are human welfare, require different tests of 
efficiency. ‘In the last analysis, the test of the efficiency 
of a charity organization society is the extent to which 
it succeeds, if not in abolishing poverty, at least in reduc- 

444 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 445 


ing to the barest possible minimum the number of those 
dependent upon the charity of strangers. In short, our 
first test is, what percentage of this group is restored 
to economic independence.‘ The test of good work in 
charity is that people are more independent. ‘The real 
test even then will not come until the children of the 
families aided have grown up and have families of their 
own. This may sound to many as an exacting test, yet 
how can the adequacy of much of our social case treat- 
ment be otherwise measured? If our treatment restores 
the widow’s family to independence at the expense of all 
schooling for every child in the family beyond his or her 
fourteenth birthday, have we truly broken the vicious 
circle of poverty and measured up to the test of reducing 
to the lowest possible figure the number-.of dependent 
families in the community? 

Although economic independence may seem to many 
a sufficient test of efficiency, the acid test of real charity 
goes beyond and must result in another man’s ennoble- 
ment. The test of the genuinely spiritual quality of any 
charitable act, says St. Thomas Aquinas, is that of inspir- 
ing in the beneficiary a desire to pray for the giver. 
Rightly interpreted, this test has not lost its value even 
for to-day.” Though incapable of statistical tabulation, 
charity must be judged by the response that it calls 
forth. To borrow a phrase from the market place, a satis- 
fied customer is the best kind of advertisement. It is also 
a test of efficient service. In short, what percentage ot 
persons coming to a charity organization society for help 
have come because the service rendered to some other 


*Frederic Almy attributes “the great reduction in the number of 
dependent families” in Buffalo “to patient constructive work.” See 
“Twenty-fifth Anniversary at Buffalo,’ Charities, Vol. X, p. 34 (1903): 
“There is nothing of which we are so proud as that, in part through 
our work, there were fewer dependent families in Buffalo in 1907 than 
there were thirty years before in 1877, when the city was only one-third 
as large.” Frederic Almy, “Relief”: a Primer, reprinted by The Charity 
Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation, p. 26 (1910). 

*See editorial, “A Medieval Efficiency Test,” by Edward T. Devine, 
The Survey, Vol. XXXII, pp. 596-507 (1914). 


446 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


client has been such as to induce them to turn to the 
same agency for similar advice and similar help? How 
often is the woodyard test abused? How often is it unsat- 
isfactory as a work test or as relief? How often does it 
either induce a “desire to pray for the giver” or produce 
‘a satisfied customer’’? 

Since good case work is the first task of every charity 
organization society, it is essential to test the quality of 
its work with individuals and families. In some cities 
many of the social agencies do good case work; in other 
communities none of the agencies have more than a vague 
idea of the meaning of the term. What then are some 
specific tests applicable to family social work? To have 
practical value these tests must be based on the fact that 
good ‘case work involves a series of steps each of which 
may be taken efficiently or not. 

Of course, the first test of efficiency of a charity 
organization work is the promptness with which all 
emergency calls are answered. To allow more than 
twenty-four hours to elapse before supplying all imme- 
diate needs, marks inefficiency. Pressure of work 
or distance from the place of need may explain 
but not excuse the delay. The degree of efficiency 
here involved is in direct proportion to promptness of 
the initial action. 

It is almost axiomatic to state that privacy is necessary 
in the first interview for the growth of that confidence 
and codperation on the part of the client of a social 
agency which is a prerequisite of efficient case work. A 
crude test of efficiency in this regard is the percentage 
of first interviews that occur in the home of the client. 
Although this may not in all instances afford complete 
privacy, there is always the added compensation of having 
the first interview in surroundings which, because natural, 
create a most invaluable background and psychological 
atmosphere for the beginning of a correct diagnosis. If 
the client comes to the office does the worker avoid pro- 


“Gnteete” Ce 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 447 


longing an interview there which it is possible to 


carry on in the home? If an office interview is unavoid- 
able, is privacy provided for? The writer was frequently 
impressed in his visits to various charity organization 
society offices with the impossibility of quiet and privacy 
for those interviews which for one reason or other 
occurred there. Although the relationship between the 
helper and the helped is closely analogous to that of the 
physician and his patient, few places visited suggested the 
atmosphere of a physician’s inner office. Doubtless lack 
of funds, especially for administrative expenses, in part 
explained this condition, but in so far as it obtained, 
there existed a visible index of efficiency, affording a test 
easy of application. Whether the interview is in the 
client’s home or at the office, is it ever allowed to come 
to a close without one thing at least in sight that will 
help the social worker to follow up logically the investi- 
gation? Moreover, are the essential facts to be learned 
so firmly grasped by the interviewer that they are kept 
constantly in mind in all contacts with the client or other 
sources of information? ‘To be compelled to return to a 
single source of information for facts which might have 
been ascertained on the first visit is to be avoided. 
Inefficiency is more likely to be found in the relatively 
few sources of information used as a basis of treatment. 
Here one should not be dogmatic in assuming that 


‘the more sources of information consulted, the better the 


case work. Over three sources may be too many in some 
cases. Less than thirty-three may be too few in others 
Experience would seem to indicate that the common error 


is on the side of using too few sources. A test of efficiency 


in this field might consist of checking off on a list of all 
sources of information found useful by the most progres- 
Sive societies of the country those habitually used by 
the society in question.t Although all the sources listed 


*The St. Louis Central Council of Social Agencies has adopted as a 
temporary standard for societies engaged in “relief and service” a list 


448 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


are not necessarily to be used in each instance, as many 
should be consulted as are required to formulate a plan 
for permanent betterment. A wide margin of choice 
should, of course, be allowed for any individual case. 
There are instances, however, where failure to consult a 
second available source of information can only result in 
poor case work. This is frequently true of cases in which 
unemployment is a factor. Personal prejudices and dis- 
likes play a big part in the judgments of most people. 
Such a dislike amounting to a grudge against one of his 
men has caused more than one boss to give a very unfair 
picture of the character of a man under him. Accord- 
ingly, it is almost axiomatic to state that no investigation 
of the work record of any breadwinner of the family 
can be satisfactory unless it includes the judgment of at 
least two of his or her previous employers, especially 
if the judgment of the last employer is unfavorable. A 
simple test of efficiency here is the percentage of cases 
where unemployment is a factor, in which at least two 
employers have been interviewed. 

In every investigation, it should ever be borne in 
mind that it is essential to ascertain for the rehabilita- 
tion of any family its standard of living when the family 
was at its best before starting on its course downward 
toward dependency. This knowledge affords a starting 
point for thoroughgoing family case work. Although 
not necessarily a goal, it reveals the warp and woof of 
the family structure on which to begin rebuilding. This 
truth is so axiomatic that it suggests a test almost uni- 
versal in its applicability, namely, in what percentage 
of cases is there an attempt to gain this information of 
the family’s earlier environment either by a visit to the 
neighborhood in question, or by correspondence? 

Cooperation is the sine qua non of all effective case 
treatment. Although codperation is more of a habit of 
of eleven sources of information. See Francis H. McLean, “Central 
ete and Community Planning,” The Survey, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 218 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 449 


‘mind than a matter of organization, the presence or 
absence of means for ready codperation is of great im- 
portance. It is taken for granted that a charity organiza- 
tion society which is entitled to the name either maintains 
a social service exchange or uses one maintained independ- 
ently or jointly with other agencies. At least if such is 
missing it must be assumed that a society doing good 
case work makes every effort possible to ascertain what 
other agencies are or have been interested in a given case 
before beginning treatment. Unless the use of the social 
service exchange is general in a community, the work 
of the local charity organization society is greatly handi- 
capped. It is therefore in order to ask what proportion 
of the social agencies of the community regularly register 
their cases with the exchange. Is the number increasing? 
The percentage of agencies making use of such an ex- 
change is an indication of the efficiency of all of them, but 
particularly of a family agency, whose work touches so 
many other agencies in every community. Continued 
failure on the part of a charity organization society to 
interest the majority of social agencies in the use of the 
social service exchange, would seem to indicate that some- 
how the charity organization society in question had 
failed to gain the cooperation of its community in a 
matter of vital concern to all. The sheer force of the 
reasonableness and value of such a common clearing 
house favors the presumption that inefficiency on the part 
of those conducting the exchange is in some measure re- 
sponsible for any continued indifference on the part of 
social agencies toward its use. 

Other tests of efficiency in gaining cooperation suggest 
themselves. With what percentage of the social agencies 
of the community does the local charity organization 
society actively and regularly codperate in handling its 
own cases?! Is the codperation of the nominal kind which 
*Under “Procuring the Services of Other Helpful Agencies,” the St. 


Louis Central Council of Social Agencies lists sixteen kinds of agencies 
as a standard for societies engaged in “relief and service.” Francis H. 


450 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


ends in an occasional exchange of compliments, or is it 
real cooperation six days in the week in which plans are 
worked out together by executives who are personally and 
intimately acquainted with each other’s work and prob- 
lems? ‘To what extent does the society win the codpera- 
tion of such natural resources as relatives, friends, former 
employers, and fellow church members? In securing such 
cooperation are personal calls made upon those whose 
interest is sought? Are letters sent to the same when 
calls are impracticable? Are group conferences arranged 
with relatives and others whose interest is essential to 
any adequate plan of treatment? 

Successful case work often demands not only whole- 
hearted codperation with local social agencies, but with 
those of other communities, especially sister charity 
organization societies. Out-of-town inquiries constitute 
an important part of the work of any efficient charity 
organization society. It is important, therefore, to know 
with what dispatch out-of-town inquiries are handled. 
Again the problem of the homeless makes a demand on a 
type of codperation that is nation-wide. ‘The recognition 
of this truth led progressive charity organization societies 
to draft a transportation agreement, by the terms of 
which each signer covenants not to “pass on” the home- 
less but to attempt some plan of constructive treatment 
for each. It is a test of elementary efficiency to learn 
whether a given society has signed the above-mentioned 
agreement and lives up to its spirit as well as its letter. 

Two tests of practical importance bearing on treatment 
are in order. First, the length of time that elapses on 
an average between the completing of the investigation 
and the mapping out of a definite plan of treatment, and 
second, the number of times on an average that the plan 
of treatment has to be changed before the right treat- 
ment is worked out for the particular case in question. 


McLean, “Central Councils and Community Planning,” The Survey, Vol. 
XXXVIIIL, p. 218 (1017). 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 451 


Some latitude must of course be allowed in applying both 

of these tests, for, to quote Miss Richmond and Mr. Hall, 

“in social as in medical case work, ‘every treatment is 

an experiment,’ and those who attempt to fasten their 

ready-made schemes upon anything so delicate as family 
life are guilty, however innocently, of a sort of quack- 
very.” 

It need not be reiterated here that material relief is 
but a part and often a small part of treatment. If it 
seems to assume an undue amount of space in the tests 
of efficiency here given, it is solely because it is more 
capable of measurement and hence of statistical state- 

ment. 
_ Although material relief is always a dangerous instru- 
‘ment of treatment, and so should not be used except when 
absolutely necessary, it should always be used unsparingly 
when used or, in more technical language, should be 
“adequate.” It need hardly be pointed out that there 
are marked individual differences in the ability of house- 
wives of all income groups to make a dollar go a cer- 
tain distance and that the purchasing power of a dollar 
varies from community to community and, more impor- 
tant, that standards of living are different in country, 
town and city. Nevertheless, there is a limit as to 
what a dollar will buy, no matter in whose hands or 
where spent. Moreover, differences in purchasing power 
or standards of living are not so great that the amount 
of relief per family in one city should require but half 
the relief granted.in another city. A test of efficiency 
of decided value is, therefore, to be found in ascertaining 
how far short of “adequate” for the community in ques- 
tion does the material relief granted by any society fall. 
Has the society translated into dollars and cents the cost 
of maintaining a standard of living below which it allows 
‘none of its families to fall? Does it use this standard 


*Mary E. Richmond and Fred S. Hall, “A Study of Nine Hundred 
‘ and Eighty-Five Widows,” Publication C. O. 34, Russell Sage Founda- 
‘tion, p. 19 (1913). 


452 CHARITY ORGANIZATION. MOVEMENT 


not as a minimum but with discrimination as a guide? 
Does it reéstimate at reasonable intervals the cost of 
maintaining this standard in view of the constant fluc- 
tuation in prices? 

It is so generally accepted as to be beyond question 
that no institution, no matter how well administered, 
offers as good a preparation for life as a good home, no 
matter how humble. This being so, it follows that any 
society which allows children of widows to be committed 
to child-caring institutions because of “poverty only” 
invites serious criticism as to the efficiency of its work. 
Such a course is a denial of the primary function of a 
charity organization society, namely, family rehabilita- 
tion. In the study by Miss Richmond and Mr. Hall 
previously quoted, it is stated “that only eighty children 
out of a possible 3,136, or a possible 2,500, were put into 
institutions for longer or shorter periods, or left there, on 
account of poverty, with the approval or tacit consent of 
the societies concerned. This is either 2%4 or 3%, ac- 
cording as the first or second total is used as a basis of 
calculation.”! Such an analysis affords a most valuable’ 
test of the efficiency of work whose prime object is the 
restoration of normal family life. 

The efficiency of any organization can be no greater 
than the efficiency of its workers. An elementary though 
indirect test of the efficiency of charity organization 
societies is therefore to be found in the amount of train- 
ing to be found in its personnel. It would take us too 
far afield to define with great accuracy all that is to be 
included under the term, a trained worker. Suffice it to 
say that on three counts the trained worker, whether paid 
or volunteer, differs from the untrained. First, the trained 
worker has the command of a specialized body of knowl- 
edge that has been organized or systematized for daily 
use. Second, the trained worker in contrast to the 


* Mary E. Richmond and Fred S. Hall, “A Study of Nine Hundred and 
Eighty-Five Widows,” Publication C. O. 34, Russell Sage Foundation, 
Pp. 37 (1913). 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 453 


untrained, has developed a consistent point of view—a 
philosophy, if you will—that underlies all his work. 
Third, the trained worker has developed a special skill 
or technique for his work. In all his activities the trained 
worker will be the one ever most open to criticism and 
_ self-examination. Do I get personal satisfaction from 
my work, and am I growing because of it? Do I know 
the kind of a world I am trying to make and does my 
work help to make this world a reality? are questions 
ever present in the mind of the trained worker. An 
organization in which the trained worker as here pic- 
tured is conspicuously absent cannot expect to know what 
standards of efficiency are, much less to apply them. 
Even the best of workers finds his or her standards 
_ lowered under pressure of too much work.! It is there- 
fore important to know how many cases per year one 
trained worker is expected to treat on an average. A 
standard set by one society limits the number to 125 per 
year. It is obvious that such a test must be applied with 
much latitude. No two types of cases, not to mention 
no two cases of the same type, require the same amount 
of thought and time.* Nevertheless, there is value in 
knowing whether the workers are treating 80 or 160 
families a month. It may be taken for granted that 
when the latter obtains over a given period of time, the 
quality of work is lower than when the number is 80. 
Thus far we have not distinguished between paid and 
volunteer work. If it is trained service, as it should be, 
there is no reason to. There is one aspect of volunteer 
service which merits special mention, namely, friendly 
visiting. This is a special part of treatment in many if 
not all cases. It therefore follows that the quality of 
the case work of a charity organization society is directly 


*It is almost the universal experience that during the first months of 
an industrial depression the case work of charity organization societies 
suffers because of pressure of work. 

7To make the test more accurate, cases might be graded e. g., Widows, 
Homeless Men, Motherless Families, etc., or Acute and Temporary, 

Intermittent, Chronic. 


454 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


influenced by the number of such visitors in its service.? 
Probably in no other detail of equipment for work do 
societies differ as much as in the number of friendly visi- 
tors at their command. 

A distinguishing feature of much of the case work of 
charity organization societies is that the plans of treat- 
ment carried out are the joint product of many minds 
meeting in conference. The efficiency with which these 
so-called ‘“‘case conferences” are conducted affects in 
turn the efficiency of much of the family planning that 
is done. One of the values of the meeting of many minds 
on a problem is the greater wealth of experience that 
is thereby made available. The need for such group 
thinking is obvious to any one who has been called 
upon to help solve any family problem. A logical test of 
efficiency therefore is found in an analysis of the per- 
sonnel of a given conference. Does it represent all points 
of view, that of the housewife and mother, the profes- 
sional man and woman, the person of little means as well 
as those comfortably situated? Does the personnel 
include representatives of other social agencies working 
in the same community or district? Is there a fair 
degree of regularity in attendance of the members of 
the conference, making for esprit de corps? Are unready 
cases brought to the conference for discussion or are they 
not only carefully prepared but also carefully chosen be- 
cause of their educational value to the conference, 
as well as because of the fact that they present prob- 
lems on which the district secretary needs the col- 
lective advice of the conference? Is there a constant 
effort on the part of the chairman of the conference to 
draw each member into discussion and at the same 
time keep the line of discussion moving steadily toward 
the goal of a definite conclusion? Is everything done 
to help the members of the conference to grow in 


“It is of course necessary to take into account the amount of time 
per week that each visitor gives to the work. 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 455 


wisdom? Are cases passed on at one meeting ever 
reviewed at subsequent meetings? Sometimes real plan- 
ning falls to the ground between the conference com- 
mittee and the district agent. Do conference members 
_ know when their plans work well or when they fail 
_and why? From the former would come encouragement; 
from the latter, the opportunity to gain further insight 
into the principles of all sound case work. Finally, does 
the chairman always endeavor to present the case in its 
larger aspects in so far as every case probably presents a 
social problem, such as the need for more adequate hous- 
ing laws, the better enforcement of the law against tru- 
ancy or the need for more adequate facilities for whole- 
some recreation? | 

The last test to claim our attention relative to the tech- 
nique of social case work is the percentage of cases which 
a society finds it necessary “to reopen.”! The theory 
which underlies such a test is that thoroughgoing case 
work to-day aims at putting a family permanently on its 
feet. If the plan for this is a poor one, including inade- 
quate relief, or if good but poorly executed, the case is 
more than likely to relapse, or if similar treatment con- 
tinues, to become recurrent. The new point of view in 
treatment plans with its eye on the future, ten, fifteen or 
twenty years ahead. It takes in all members of the 
family and concerns itself with the future of the children 
involved lest poverty should become a vicious circle, con- 
tinuing indefinitely. It is not to be assumed that every 
case should be closed when an independent income level 
is reached. The importance, therefore, of having a case 
record carefully reviewed by a disinterested and judicial 
mind before closing is self-evident. To prevent the too 
hasty closing of cases after the immediate situation 
which brought the family in question under the society’s 
care has changed, certain societies require the considera- 


*This test may be modified so as to include only cases reopened within 
a year, or other specified time. 


4 56 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


tion by some central authority such as the registrar’s 
office, or a committee on closed cases, of all cases which 
the district office is about to close. In applying the fore- 
going test, it must be remembered that some societies 
assume that the family once under care should be followed 
up indefinitely by the friendly visitor or by active treat- 
ment. 

A test akin to that just suggested is what percentage 
of cases under the society’s care are inactive. It is gen- 
erally agreed that the existence of a large number of such 
cases which indicate a failure to reach a conclusion re- 
garding the treatment involved as finished or unfinished, 
indicates a certain degree of inefficiency. To guard 
against this danger, at least one society requires a review 
by the visitors every month of all the inactive records in 
the districts. 

Charity organization societies that live up to their pos- 
sibilities have other objects than those just stated. Per- 
haps it would be more accurate to say that these other 
“objects” are inseparable from any thoroughgoing 
efforts looking toward the reduction of dependency. 
These objects are first, the education of the public in the 
correct methods of social case treatment, and second, the 
scientific analysis of the causes of poverty that society 
with knowledge founded on facts may take such steps to 
improve social and economic conditions that much future 
poverty may be prevented. Both of these objects offers 
its own tests of efficiency. 

Few who understand the task confronting charity 
organization societies will minimize the importance of the 
educational part of its program. The opportunities in 
every community for really thoroughgoing case work are 
such as would swamp any charity organization society, 
however well organized. Moreover, such organizations 
would not consider it desirable to monopolize all the 
charitable work in their respective communities, granted 
such were possible. They aim rather, as already pointed 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 457 


out,' to improve the quality of the beneficence which is 
practiced by the typical citizen in his everyday relation- 
ships, and to see that our children’s children help adjust 
the unadjusted of their day better than we are to-day. 
The nature of the job and its size preclude any other 
course. It therefore follows that a legitimate test of the 
efficiency of a charity organization society is the general 
level of intelligence of the public at large in matters of 
philanthropy. 

If charity organization societies were only able to 
tell what they know and do in a way to command 
attention, they would meet with a minimum of criti- 
cism and indifference. A test of the extent to which 
any society has lived up to its opportunities to educate 
public opinion comes at a time of a local disaster or 
during a period of universal unemployment. Does the 
community at large at such times have sufficient under- 
standing and confidence in the work of the society to seek 
its aid in the solution of problems coming within its 
special field? If not, have one or more of the following 
channels been used to create such understanding and con- 
fidence, public meetings, well advertised and with attrac- 
tive programs; an intelligent and regular use of the press; 
exhibits; the publication of reports, pamphlets and bulle- 
tins that compel attention, a wise use of volunteers ade- 
quately supervised; study classes; personal missionary 
work in the community? 

Various societies have utilized each of these methods 
with gratifying results. Space permits but a few illus- 
trations. Mr. Oscar McCulloch, founder of the Indian- 
apolis Society, is said to have attributed whatever suc- 
cess it had in its early days to the public meetings 
held on the Sunday evenings following Thanksgiving 
days; “meetings which were held in the large opera 
house, from which many were turned away, at which 
short talks was given on phases of charity, not statistical 


* 1S¢e pp. 96, 97. 


458 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


but inspirational; whose proceedings were reported by the 
daily papers, column after column and were circulated 
afterwards in pamphlet form.”? Another society evolved 
a method of systematic advertising by offering to any 
church a program of three ten-minute speeches on three 
topics covering the lines of most importance in the work 
of the society. No money was asked for. The churches 
welcomed the program and the volunteer speakers found 
no lack of opportunities for speaking.” The charity 
organization society of another city, desiring the under- 
standing and support of the union workingmen of the 
city, has tried the plan of a joint meeting with the local 
Trades and Labor Council. | 
A ready test of the efficiency of a society’s efforts 
to educate the public is the attitude of the local press 
not only toward the society but in any matter involving 
principles of relief. To what percentage of newspapers 
has there been a conscious and definite attempt on the 
part of the society in question to afford a real understand- 
ing of its aims and methods? Mention has already been 
made of one general secretary who went out of his way 
to explain the work of his organization to each “cub” 
reporter sent to get news, on the theory that some day 
he might be promoted to city editor. The policy has al- 
ready borne fruit in the intelligent support of the press of 
that city.t* Besides this more or less passive attitude 
toward the press, what active use is made of its columns 
as mediums of popular education? Has any agreement 
been made with leading newspapers for a certain amount 
of space each week to be supplied by the local charity 
organization society? Such has been tried in at least one 


* Jeffrey Brackett, Supervision and Education in Philanthropy, p. 134 
1903). 

* Anon., “In the Field of Organizing Charity,” Charities and The Com- 
mons, Vol. XV, p. 405 (1905): See also Anon., “Informing the Public on 
Private Charities,’ The Survey, Vol. XXX, p. 726 (1913). 

*Anon., Charities, Vol. VIII, p. 147 (1902). 

*See pp. 348-350. 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 459 


large city.'. When charity organization societies are able 
to tell what they know of social conditions and their re- 
sults in the lives of the disadvantaged, they will command 
the space in the daily press which they deserve. 

What has just been said of commanding attention in 
_the press applies equally to annual reports, bulletins 
_ and other literature issued. Are they presented in read- 
able form? Do the annual reports educate their readers 
in the correct methods of philanthropy and in an under- 

standing of the social forces making for poverty, or do 
_ they appeal almost solely to their spirit of benevolence 
and leave them otherwise unenlightened? How many 
charity organization societies test their money-getting 
methods by the amount of intelligent understanding of 
' the causes of poverty they produce? Do annual reports 
render to the public an honest and clear statement of 
stewardship or are they actively miseducating the public 
in regard to the methods of constructive case work? In 
_ short, is the charity of the community becoming increas- 
ingly the privilege of the thoughtful only? 

One of the most effective means of educating the public 
is the intelligent use of volunteers. The spoken word of 
one with first-hand knowledge carries conviction where 
printed words fail. Anything which increases the number 
of volunteers without lowering the standard of service 
affords just so many more channels for vital contact be- 
tween the society and the public at large. Tests of 
efficiency in the use of volunteers are discussed else- 
where.” 

What has just been said of the effectiveness of a first- 
hand knowledge of aims and methods applies with equal 
force to any missionary efforts on an individual basis 
put forth by the society itself. Has it ever conducted 


*Anon., “In the Field of Organizing Charity,” Charities and The 
Commons, Vol. XV, p. 405 (1905). See also Anon., “Informing the 
Public on Private Charities,” The Survey, Vol. XXX, p. 756 (1913). 

*See p. 465. 


460 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


an educational canvass whose object has been to visit at 
least the influential families in its community to present 
to them personally the purpose and work that it was 
doing? If any money is raised by a collector, is the 
opportunity always grasped of using some one who not 
only asks for contributions but explains as well the prin- 
ciples and methods of its work? 


CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETIES AND MOVEMENTS FOR 
IMPROVING SOCIAL CONDITIONS 


The vital relationship between social case work and 
community movements has been pointed out elsewhere.’ 
To know whether a charity organization society is making 
case work function in community work is about as essen- 
tial as to know whether it is doing good case work. What 
tests can one apply to arrive at an intelligent answer? 
To what extent does the society analyze the facts with 
which it deals in its daily contact with families and indi- 
viduals? ‘To what extent are these facts tabulated and 
promptly brought to the attention of the public or to an 
agency interested in preventive work in the field of the 
problem presented? It is self-evident that the case 
records of the society must be accurately kept and tabu- 
lated in such a manner as to be capable of statistical 
treatment if the society is to have the basis on which to > 
render such service. 

It is possible that the contributions of some societies 
must necessarily be limited in this field, due to the small 
number of cases under treatment. But these societies are 
few. Even with the smaller societies, the number of cases 
on record rapidly accumulates, and if they have been 
accurately and uniformly kept they afford valuable data 
for statistical study. 

With the advent of the Russell Sage Foundation largely, 


"See Pp. 96, 14 
* Jeffrey R. Bicee “Education and Supervision in Charity,” p. 144 


(1903). 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 461 


a child of the charity organization movement,! which 
constitutes a huge laboratory for the compilation and in- 
terpretation of social facts, it may be contended that the 
necessity for individual societies to collect and interpret 
their own facts is to a certain degree lessened. Such may 
_be true in part, but it makes it all the more imperative that 
societies which take this position should adopt the uniform 
record schedule approved by the Russell Sage Foundation 
-and should always hold themselves ready to codperate 
-in any study of their records which the above-named 
Foundation may undertake, especially those made by its 
charity organization department. 

In addition to furnishing the public or other social 
agencies with a fact basis for preventive movements, 
charity organization societies should take an active inter- 
est in pushing the matter further. If no agency exists to 
meet the problem it should aid in its creation or under- 
take it itself. If a law is needed, it should agitate until 
such is secured. It is only by the systematic codperation 
of the social agencies and the socially minded in each 
community that such results can be accomplished. Has 
the charity organization society helped to create the 
machinery for such systematic codperation? Besides 
assuring a social service exchange, no charity organiza- 
tion society can be said to have measured up to its highest 
efficiency which has not been active in creating or aiding 
in the creation of some organization in the form of a 
city conference or a central council of social agencies, 
whose object is to codrdinate the social forces of the 
community. In short, a vital test of the efficiency of any 
case work agency is not alone the number of families 
helped but the number of useful laws it has helped to 
place on the statute books and the number of social move- 


*It is a matter of common knowledge that it was Mr. Robert de 
Forest, president of the New York Society who suggested to Mrs. Russell 
Sage the need for such work as that conducted by the foregoing Foun- 
dation. He afterward played an important role in putting the plan into 
operation. 


462 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


ments of a preventive character it has helped to foster 
directly or indirectly. 


THE PERSONNEL 


Probably the most important factor in the efficiency 
of any organization is the calibre of person it commands 
in its services. The truth of this statement is most 
clearly seen in those organizations where the personal 
equation looms largest, as is the case with all work 
dealing with individuals. It is here that neither hours 
nor quantity of product nor skill is the first thing, but 
rather what, for want of a better term, we may call the 
spirit of the worker. For this, science has not revealed 
any definite measure of individual capacity. Neverthe- 
less, there are certain rough tests which are serviceable 
in ascertaining the relative fitness of a given group of 
workers for the task in hand. 

Since much of the work of social case workers involves 
human contacts, the personality of the worker is of ut- 
most importance. ‘If culture means anything,” writes 
Miss Richmond, “it means the conquest of our natural 
instincts, and the substitution for them of a sympathetic 
and patient appreciation of the lives and aims of creatures 
least like ourselves.” A list of qualifications which car- 
ries the weight of authority and stresses both personality 
and training follows: 


Health, that we may be cheerful. 

Hopefulness, that we may infuse new life into those 
with whom we come into contact. | 

Power of discrimination, as no two persons are alike, 
no two persons can be met or dealt with the same way. 

Power of endurance. 

Cheerful disposition. 

Good reasoning powers. 

Thoughtfulness, firmness, kindness, keen observation, 
judgment of human nature, sympathy and tact. 

Power to think and act quickly: 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 463 


Ability to keep one’s equilibrium in a trying moment. 

Adaptibility, perseverance, diplomacy, thoroughness, 
good memory for faces and names. 

A knowledge of the city, an acquaintance with its con- 
ditions and resources; knowledge of trade unions and 
their customs. 

_ A knowledge of the average wages in the different lines. 
A general and practical knowledge of every day life. 
Strong persuasive powers. 

Trained legal instinct.! 


A good social case worker must have the ability to 
‘command such confidence as to succeed in gaining 
cooperation. If there is constant complaint that this or 
that individual receiving treatment or this or that agency 
will not codperate, one may rest assured that the worker 
in question is in the wrong pew in social work and in- 
efficiency is bound to accompany his or her work. As 
personal acquaintance with workers in other organiza- 
tions makes possible a degree of codperation not other- 
wise obtainable, it is not out of order to ask if the worker 
In question grasps all opportunities for making such per- 
sonal contacts as membership in a local social workers’ 
club, attendance at local, state and national conferences 
of social work. 

A good social case worker must have such a grasp of the 
essential facts to be ascertained in all interviews with 
clients that, without any visible memorandum in the form 
of notebook, he or she may secure those facts as com- 
pletely as though the customary face card of the case rec- 
ord had been in evidence at all times. The efficiency of 
the worker may well be said to vary in direct ratio to the 
amount of dependence placed on a prearranged schedule, 
paper and pencil. In brief, the good worker must possess 
in addition to the charm and force of personality that 


*Francis H. McLean, “Organized Charity,” Charities and The Com- 
mons, Vol. XXI, p. 317 (1908). 


464 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


gains cooperation, an orderly mind, a discriminating judg- 
ment of values and a retentive memory. 

Besides the tests of the fitness of personality for the 
work in hand, there are the tests of intellectual endow- 
ment and special equipment for the job already touched 
upon. What educational standards, either general or 
special, does the charity organization society in question 
demand of its would-be employees? Does it require a 
high school course or its equivalent, a year’s training in 
a recognized school of social work? Does the society 
require further study and training of its workers during 
a period of probation? All other factors the same, the 
quality of the work of that society with the highest re- 
quirements of preparation on the part of its staff will 
be the best. 

While the test as to salaries paid must necessarily fre- 
quently fail, it has merit in enough instances to have 
value. What is the scale of salaries paid to district 
workers, to district secretaries, to the general secretary? 
A veteran in the ranks of charity organization told the 
writer that throughout the movement one of the great 
causes of inefficiency in many societies, especially in the 
smaller communities, has been the failure to provide 
salaries sufficiently large to attract men of the first grade 
of ability. The analogy of the charity organization 
worker is with the physician rather than with the clergy- 
man. In all fields, however, the laborer is worthy of his 
hire. An expert task requires expert services, which 
costs. The fee of a medical specialist does not subject 
him to the charge of being such for what is in it, 
nor does it prevent him from being a public-spirited 
citizen. Moreover, there is nothing more praiseworthy 
about the work of a charity organization society than 
there is about teaching, or preaching, or doctoring, or 
sanitary engineering, or any other line of honest work. 
Such work can make no special claims. It ought to stand 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 465 


or fall of its own merit, and should be supported by the 
community it serves on this basis and this basis alone. 


PERSONNEL OF VOLUNTEER FORCE 


While the tests immediately preceding were written 
with the paid employee primarily in mind, practically all 
apply equally to the volunteer. As has been well pointed 

out, the epoch in social work which was characterized 
by a certain sentimentality about volunteers, is coming 
to a close.? Credit has been given to volunteers where 
credit was not due. To-day volunteers are being obliged 
to prove their capacity for engaging in social work be- 
cause social workers have learned through experience 
‘with volunteers what high standards can be expected of 
those who wish to make social work their avocation. It 
is antiquated to contrast the professional with the vol- 
unteer worker. ‘Salary has nothing to do with the quality 
and quantity of an individual’s contribution to social 
work. . . . What counts in social work as in any- 
thing else is the amount of time, thought and ability that 
an individual expends upon the job.” 


ORGANIZATION 


Ii charity organization societies stand for one thing 
above all else, it is for that efficiency in charity that 
results from right organization. It is therefore in order 
to inquire whether the form of organization of the typical 
charity organization society best accomplishes its ends. 
It is, of course, to be borne in mind that a form of organ- 
ization for a small town cannot be or should not be 
identical with that of a metropolitan city. In the his- 

1Mary E. Richmond, “The Training of Charity Workers,” Charities 
| Review, Vol. VI, pp. 320-321 (1897). 

*Karl de Schweinitz, Avocational Guidance. Proceedings, National 


Conference of Charities and Connection, 44th session, pp. 118-125 (1917). 
ie Ibid. 


466 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


torical part of this study several forms of organization 
societies have been noted. Two of them have been 
referred to as the so-called Philadelphia and St. Paul 
plans, respectively. In addition to these there is the 
more typical form of organization that has developed 
elsewhere and a more recent form found in Rochester, 
New York. In the Philadelphia plan’ the distinguishing 
feature is its decentralization, with almost complete local 
autonomy even to finances. In the St. Paul plan the 
governing body of the Associated Charities is composed 
of official representatives from the various social agencies 
of the city. In the more usual form of organization 
obtaining elsewhere, the charity organization society is 
one of a group of social agencies. It has its own board 
of directors, its paid executive head and staff, responsible 
in the main directly to him though working under the 
district plan. The board has its various committees, such 
as those on finance, publicity, etc., and in certain com- 
munities on such problems as housing, and tuberculosis. 
Under the Rochester plan the central council of social 
agencies of the city constitutes the general board of the 
United Charities, electing the executive committee, which 
manages the society’s work. 

By what tests may one judge which form of organiza- 
tion best fits the purposes of a social agency whose object 
is thorough social case treatment, the education of the 
public in the principles of relief and the formation of a 
public opinion educated as to the social and economic 
factors causing poverty? It is not easy to give an answer. 
Many of the problems are yet to be worked out. How- 
ever, time enough has passed since the charity organiza- 
tion movement was launched to suggest certain tests, 
tentative though they must be, which may throw light 
on the question raised. 

In the first place, although retaining through the dis- 


*This has since been changed. See p. 284. 
*St. Paul has long since abandoned this, plan. 


| 
| 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 467 


trict plan all the advantages of local community pride in 
large cities, the central body of a charity organization 
society should have complete administrative control over 
the whole territory served by the society. Uniformity of 
service is made necessary by the interrelation of various 
parts of any great city and the interdependence of their 
welfare. The whole city suffers from poor service in 
any of its parts. Standardization of service can only be 
secured through centralized control. The first test of 
efficiency in matters of organization, therefore asks, is the 
administrative control over the work of the society in all 
its districts and departments so centralized that it insures 
uniformity of service? 

Although centralization is essential for efficiency for 
reasons just given, there should be decentralization of 
work through the district plan. The district superin- 
tendent should have an extent of territory of a size that 
will allow him or her to know its assets and liabilities like 
a book. It should be small enough to utilize what is 
existent in every community, though often dormant,— 
namely, its neighborhood pride and spirit. It should be 
of such a size that neighborly relations with those to be 
helped can be readily established. Our second test as to 
organization raises the question, is the city districted in 
such a fashion as to conserve neighborhood spirit and 
to insure to each district office what Chalmers called “a 
manageable portion of territory’’? * 

The third test of efficiency in the matter of organiza- 
tion relates to activity in all parts of the organization. 
Of the various committees of the society, how many are 
active? It is more important that there be fewer com- 
mittees, but each fundamental and active than a long 
list with the majority so much dead wood. New com- 
mittees may always be added as occasion demands. 

The fourth test raises the question of organization for 
economy in so far as it is not incompatible with efficiency. 


4It is obvious that this test is applicable only to larger communities. 


468 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


Are overhead charges kept at a minimum, if not by the 
use of a social service building, at least by having as many 
social agencies as possible occupy quarters in the same 
building, thus saving on telephone expenses,’ clerks, often 
on heat and janitor service? This does not take into 
account the very real gain in codperation which results 
from occupying offices within a few feet of each other. 

A final test in the field of organization refers to rela- 
tions to the local government. It is axiomatic to say that 
they should be of the most codperative nature. Many 
grave dangers arise, however, when the cooperation as- 
sumes the form of a subsidy or other financial support. 
Bureaus of Municipal Research still find that they can 
render more efficient service when supported independ- 
ently of the public purse. Many of the arguments in 
favor of the position of a free lance apply to an agency 
aiming to be a standard bearer in the field of family 
rehabilitation. With public opinion in its present state 
of enlightenment as to the standards of social case 
treatment, a society with independent support can, as a 
rule, maintain higher standards than when the reverse 
is true. The future may, let us hope, tell a different 
tale. It is difficult to see, however, how at any time a 
society largely supported by government through the 
subsidy system or maintained as a government depart- 
ment, can as readily make its case work function socially 
if such would involve criticism of a collateral department 
of government, such as the departments of health, hous- 
ing or education. 

An efficient form of organization may, however, func- 
tion inefficiently. It is, therefore, necessary to suggest 
a set of tests which deals with functioning, just as the last 
set presented dealt with structure. 

At the head of every charity organization society stands 
the board of directors. The first test of efficiency here 
is, therefore, the obvious one,—do the directors really 


*A central operator in the building is the usual method. 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 469 


direct? This does not mean that the office detail, the 
direction of subordinate paid employees, the operation 
of the relief department, should be controlled by the 
board of directors. Such would be bad administrative 
policy wherever found. The work of a charity organiza- 
tion society, however, requires the codrdination of the 
friendly forces of the community for the benefit of the 
distressed and unfortunate. ‘“‘No man can do it. There 
must be a nucleus of interested people, thoroughly con- 
vinced of the necessity and value of the movement, who 
are known as giving, not merely money, but still more, 
time and thought to the effort. The directors must not 
merely lend their names,—they must give intelligent 
interest, contagious enthusiasm and real directive 
force.”! They must enlist “the hearty and persistent 
cooperation in voluntary and unpaid work of a wide 
circle of people differing in temperament, creed, habits 
of life and even nationality.” * 

A test of the efficiency of a board to render this im- 
portant service lies in an analysis of its composition. Is 
the board as representative as possible? Does it com- 
mand the confidence of the community? 

“But the best list of names will not suffice, though 
every church, social and business interest is represented 
on it. No one man, no matter how tactful and resource- 
ful, can be wise enough and prudent enough to avoid 
the misunderstanding so constantly arising, to convince 
the people so apt to look only from their own point of 
view. ‘The representatives of the various interests asso- 
ciated must feel that they are cooperating; they must feel ” 
that they have a genuine share in the work, and they can 
only be brought to this point by the aid of the volunteer 
directors. Then, again, it is sometimes necessary to 
show the codperating agencies certain faults or deficien- 
cies in their methods. To do this without giving offense 


*Alexander Johnson, “An Open Letter to Directors,” The Survey, Vol. 
XXIV, p. 135 (1910). 
? Ibid. 


470 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


is difficult enough under any circumstances, but it is much 
more difficult when it has to be done by the paid secretary 
than when it is undertaken by a volunteer member of the 
board of directors. 

An ordinary business pays, in money, every one who 
works for it. But an associated charities must have many 
other workers besides the paid agents. How can we 
enlist them and keep them in line? It cannot be done 
unless they feel that those who direct are themselves 
unselfish workers, actuated by the same motives that 
have brought them into the fellowship. And, when the 
volunteer workers lose interest and drop out, the society 
is at the beginning of the end of its best usefulness. The 
numbers and interest of the volunteer workers are among 
the best tests of a society’s vigor.” * 

Among the duties of the board of directors, their 
financial responsibility must not be overlooked. While 
the work of propaganda is almost entirely the duty of 
the paid worker, the question of finance belongs in the 
last analysis with the board of directors. This obligation 
they may discharge through a finance committee, through 
the employment of a financial secretary or the creation 
of a citizen committee. There is inefficiency, if not 
injustice, in any society where the general secretary is 
expected to administer the work of his society and at 
the same time to raise his or her own salary and that of 
the staff. A clear understanding of a division of respon- 
sibility should obtain from the beginning. 

Finally, do the members of the board of directors apply 
the same business and professional standards to the work 
of the society that they apply to their business enter- 
prises or professions? Are they determined that no part 
of the work of the society shall in any sense be “penny | 
wise and pound foolish’’? | 

It follows from what has just been said of the duties | 


of the board of directors that the paid executive head 
1 Alexander Johnson, “An Open Letter to Directors,” The Survey, Vol. 
XML VG Dede 5 ah ROLO). 4 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 47I 


should be left free to engage or dismiss whom he wishes 
for the good of the service, provided it is consistent with 
the budget; that he should be responsible directly or 
indirectly for the direction of the work of all subordinates, 
including all details of administration connected with the 
day’s work of the society. Both political science, with 
its emphasis on the principle of the short ballot, and busi- 
ness administration with its concentration of authority, 
teach the wisdom of the above statements. In so far asa 
board member of a charity organization society may 
either engage or dismiss an employee, inefficiency has 
entered into the work of the society in question. This 
does not mean that there should not be a partnership 
between the directing board and the body of the workers, 
nor that the principles of democracy being introduced 
into industrial management should not apply here. 


ADMINISTRATION 


The administration of any social agency involves both 
its arrangements for doing its work and its relations to 
the public. The former raises questions of 


The keeping of useful records. 
Office system. 

Supervision of workers. 
Training new workers. 
Maintaining esprit de corps. 


The latter raises questions of 


Finance 

Propaganda 

Reports 

Accessibility to those who desire to make use of it. 


It remains for us to discuss standards and tests of 
efficiency for each. 


472 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


THE KEEPING OF USEFUL RECORDS 


The usefulness of the records of a charity organization 
society are to be measured by their value to the individual 
or family concerned, to the community in arousing effort 
for the common welfare, and lastly, to the socal agency 
keeping them, as a basis for reports of their stewardship 
of the funds entrusted to them. What then are the 
standards of usefulness that one can apply to records. 
One must remember that small societies do not require 
the variety of records needed in large city offices, and that 
the art of case recording is still in a stage that does not 
permit of dogmatism. 

Beginning with the case record, which form of record 
even the smallest society keeps, what is to be the standard 
of its completeness? It perhaps would not be well to go 
below the standard found in one city where a minimum 
case record is required to contain information on at least 
twenty-one points, such as names, previous addresses, 
employers (departments and foremen), names and ad- 
dresses of relatives, etc.1_ Of equal importance with the 
completeness of information sought is the matter of the 
form of the record. Is it such as to encourage those 
keeping records to record facts rather than impressions? ? 
Is the form of schedule comparable with those of previous 
years, but more important still, with those of the most 
progressive societies of the country? 

Aside from the question of the material included in the 
case record, there are some details of method in record 
keeping that make for efficiency. Are committee de- 
cisions made to stand out by entering in red or underlin- 
ing? Are long entries properly organized and broken up 
into paragraphs? Are marginal headings ever used? 
Are long records indexed? When correspondence is filed 


*St. Louis. See Francis H. McLean. “Central Councils and Com- 
munity Planning,” The Survey, Vol. XXXVIII, pp. 216-219 (1917). 

7 Of course it is true that no matter what form is used an unskilled 
worker is likely to record impressions rather than facts. 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 473 


separately from the history sheets, does the entry con- 
cerning letters received contain a line or two summariz- 
ing their contents to facilitate a concentration of attention 
on the salient features of the case history? 

It is self-evident that the value of facts learned 
through investigation is almost in direct ratio to the 
promptness with which they are put into permanent form 
in the case records, not only because when rough notes 
“cool,” they lose much of their original value, but because 
they are constantly needed in each stage of treatment. 
The writer knows of some societies in which much of 
this work is put off until the summer months, when the 
number of families cared for by all societies is materially 
reduced. While the excuse for not keeping records at 
all times up-to-date may be pressure of other work which 
is more urgent, it nevertheless follows that just in pro- 
portion as time elapses before transcribing facts into per- 
manent records is there a loss of efficiency. 

Mention has been made of the contrast in the point 
of view of treatment which aims to relieve current distress 
only, and treatment that is truly constructive in planning 
ahead fifteen or twenty years with the welfare of the 
entire family, including that of the youngest child, con- 
stantly kept in mind. The latter view has resulted in the 
use by some societies of a statistical card which shows at 
a glance, the health history, work history, personal traits, 
home conditions, income, etc., of each member of any 
family under the society’s care and the treatment used. 
Space is left under each heading to enter all steps which 
are taken to remedy defects or to improve the welfare 
of the individual in respect to any of the items listed. 
Truly efficient case work would not permit of closing 
the case until all weaknesses or defects were remedied, 
even though immediate restoration to independence did 
not depend on some of the work undertaken. A summary 
at the end of stated periods shows what has been done 
on the case during the period in question, and hence 


474 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


serves as a test of efficiency. In combination with a 
system of signals, it is possible for each society to review 
its work each year, to discover the human elements with 
which it is dealing and to present in graphic form the 
social status, racial characteristics, physical, mental and 
moral peculiarities, the helps employed in dealing with 
the family, and such other facts as serve to epitomize the 
family condition, diagnosis and treatment. Such a card 
reveals what social machinery for handling certain defects 
and problems is lacking in a given community as, for 
example, farm colonies for inebriates, and dental clinics, 
and also makes it possible for a charity organization so- 
ciety to supply any agency engaged largely in preventive 
work, the facts it may need in its campaigns, be they 
legislative or educational, as to the relation between 
poverty and the reform in question. In brief, a very 
important test of whether any charity organization 
society is living up to its full responsibilities is the 
promptness with which it can ‘translate its cases into 
problems.” This test is of paramount importance. 
“The charity worker who is content with the relief of 
pressing needs does not tabulate statistical material; but 
if he has insight into needs, vision and faith that misery 
may one day be abolished, his vision will lead him to 
combine, with his effort for the needy, a recording of 
such research material as may be needed for legislative 
or other action.” ” 


OFFICE SYSTEM 


In the management of the office of a charity organiza- 
tion society there is no more excuse for not using 
every time-saver and method making for efficiency than 


*The keeping of such cards involves regularity, accuracy and patience 
together with clerical labor. 

* Rose J. McHugh, “The Meaning and Limitations of Records in Relief 
Work,” a paper read at the fourth biennial meeting of the National Con- 
ference of Catholic Charities, held in Washington, D. C., September 
17-20 (1916). 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 475 


there is for not using them in the office of a bank, com- 
mercial house or a manufacturing concern. This raises 
questions of methods used in case recording, filing and 


indexing and the use of mechanical devices to save labor. 
_ It seems to be the general consensus of opinion that the 


filing of case records and subject matter of all sorts 
_ should be in vertical files in folders arranged numerically 


with the complementary card index. Facility of finding 


_ data needed is not the only reason for this arrangement. 


No society is small enough not to need a social service 
exchange. Such an exchange or registry of cases by other 
societies is impossible without an alphabetical card index 


of all cases—C. O. S. cases and others combined. 


Whether a society uses the card index method as opposed 
to filing its folders and records alphabetically thus be- 
comes a test of prime importance in office efficiency. 

In the conduct of a social service exchange, quick and 
careful means of identification are essential to efficiency. 
Street indexes offer a means of identifying cases which 
the index fails to show up because of variations of spelling. 
Street indexes are also valuable in connection with cam- 
paigns to improve social and living conditions. Whether 
a society maintains such an index bears directly on its 
ability to translate cases into problems. Experience 
seems to teach the wisdom of filing all correspondence 


alphabetically rather than by subject matter. The adher- 


ence to this plan offers a further test of office efficiency. 
It need hardly be added that wherever feasible charity 
organization societies, in common with all social agencies, 
should make use of all aids to memory, as “the tickler,” 
and all labor-saving devices possible, such as adding ma- 
chines and systems of duplicate writing. By a single 
operation of the typewriter, one well-known social agency 
prepares the three necessary records of each contribution, 
namely (1) the subscribers’ receipt, ready for mailing in 
a window envelope, (2) entry of gift on page of donation 


book used by both the cashier and subscription depart- 


476 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


ment, (3) card record of gift—cards filed alphabetically 
during year, and then sent to printers for making con- 
tributors’ list in annual report. At the same time an 
adding machine attached to the typewriter mechanically 
adds the amounts received each day. Each of the three 
records bears the same serial number. Such methods 
obviously spell efficiency. 

One final test is in order, in reference to the office 
side of efficiency. Has some person experienced in office 
equipment and arrangement been consulted as to lighting, 
arrangement of furniture, especially the files, the installa- 
tion of new equipment where needed, and the best 
utilization of floor space, so as to afford opportunity for 
complete privacy for any interviews which must be held 
either in part or in whole. If the analogy between the 
social worker and the physician holds good at any point, 
it is in the confidential nature of the relationship and the 
desirability of every facility being used to create a spirit 
of cooperation between the client and the worker. The 
arrangement of many offices make for neither confidence 
nor cooperation, because it does not respect the rights of 
privacy much less personality. 


SUPERVISION OF WORKERS 


Only by a systematic critical review of the work of 
a charity organization society is there hope of in- 
creasing the efficiency of the work and workers. The 
rapid changes in personnel, paid as well as volunteer, 
in many societies, makes this policy all the more imper- 
ative. In seeking to learn the relative efficiency of any 
case work agency, it is in order to ask if any supervision 
of work done is attempted. If so, is it adequate? 
Too much work is expected of any case supervisor if he 
or she cannot keep constantly in touch with at least some 
current case records and improve the quality of current 
treatment by frequent constructive criticisms and sug- 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 477 


gestions, or if he or she finds little or no time for regular 
personal conferences with district superintendents or for 
attendance at regular intervals at district conferences. 
Under the possible methods of supervision, it is well to 
ascertain whether it is limited to reading current and 
closed records or whether this is supplemented by not 
only the personal conferences above referred to, but also 
by regular meetings of visitors for the technical discus- 
sion of case and district work and by the use of daily 
and monthly reports covering such details of the day’s 
work as number of active cases, number of new cases, 
number of visits made, number of pension cases, and 
amount of emergency expenditures from the general 
fund. If a society has no machinery for regularly 
supervising the work of its visitors, it may at least 
encourage self-supervision by requiring of each visitor at 
definite periods synopses of a given number of cases. A 
study of a certain period of work six months later may 
have valuable results in the way of self-supervision.? 
The ultimate object of all supervision is to increase 
efficiency. It may attempt to accomplish this by a prompt 
elimination from the services of a society of all who do 
not attain a certain standard or it may afford the basis 
of instructing and encouraging individual workers and 
of grading all,” so that there can be a conscious attempt 
to fit the job to the worker at each stage of his or her 
development. This would have a tendency toward reduc- 
ing “labor turn over.” This principle of scientific man- 
agement is as applicable to philanthropic agencies as to 
the world of business. A group of workers who are con- 
stantly shifting obviously do not possess the efficiency of 
a like sized group which is seasoned and has acquired the 
habit of teamwork. A district secretary, for example, 


*Of course self-supervision may be used in conjunction with the 
employment of a case work supervisor. 

*See Gertrude Vaile, “An Experiment in Trying to Grade District 
Visitors,” Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Cor- 
rection, 42nd session, p. 88 (1915). 


478 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


who but yesterday, figuratively speaking, was in the em- 
ploy of another agency, or was working in another city, 
cannot possess that intimate knowledge of his or her dis- 
trict as regards its social assets and liabilities, that per- 
sonal relationship with volunteers of the district and that 
sense of ‘“‘belonging” to the weekly case conference, all of 
which combined go to make for efficiency. What then is 
the typical length of the term of service of district secre- 
taries, of paid visitors, of volunteers? 

Supervision also makes it possible for a social agency 
to guard against overwork on the part of its employees. 
If any group of workers need ‘‘to let go” and breathe 
deep in the interest of their work, it is social case workers. 
From the list of qualifications for social work already 
given, it is obvious that one possessing a majority of such 
qualifications can hope to retain them in season and out 
only by a balanced rational life of work, rest and recrea- 
tion. Any departure from this is “penny wise and pound 
foolish,” and the efficiency of any society which tolerates 
overwork over any length of time is to that extent impair- 
ing its present and future value. To know to what 
extent overwork is required or permitted, therefore be- 
comes a test of no little importance. In connection with 
this, it would be well to know how much absence from 
work by employees is due to sickness. 

Much that has been said of supervision applies equally 
to the supervision of the work of volunteers,’ and some — 
of it with even greater force. There is possibly greater 
need, for example, to fit the job to the volunteer at each 
stage of his or her development in order that interest may 
be maintained. There is doubtless greater need for 
instruction and encouragement, and there is, above all, 
need of supervision as a check on any possible mistakes 


* The efficiency of the growing body of volunteers determines in turn 
much of the efficiency of the work of the society. This is independent 
of the fact that volunteers prove an effective means of creating an 
intelligent public opinion not only as to sound principles of social case 
work but also as to the causes of many social maladjustments. 


—& 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 479 


In Carrying out a plan of treatment due to errors of one 
kind or another on the part of the volunteers. It, there- 
fore, follows that any complete list of tests of efficiency 
must answer the question, is there adequate supervision 
of the work of volunteers, by either the district su- 
_ perintendent, visitation committees of volunteers, or some 
_ volunteer who has the gift of leadership and sees the 
_ value of volunteer service? The adequacy of the supervi- 
sion can be tested in part by ascertaining whether the 
number of volunteers is increasing, why they withdraw, 
what is the range of services open to them,! and whether 
they themselves regard their services as valuable. Vol- 
unteers may work for years without grasping the full 
significance of their task because it has never been pre- 
sented to them. 


TRAINING NEw WORKERS 


Probably the biggest factor in all efficiency is training. 
It follows that that society is most efficient which has the 
best trained corps of workers, volunteer as well as paid. 
The development of training schools for social workers 
has helped solve the problem of the trained paid worker. 
. Need for further specialized and technical training, how- 
ever, still exists on the part of the graduates of these 
training schools on their entrance into the employ of 
charity organization societies.2 Training schools have 
thus far done little toward the problem of training volun- 
teers because they have drawn to themselves mainly those 
who enter the ranks of the paid worker. 

In view of the above facts, an indirect test of the 
efficiency of a given charity organization society is found 
in the provisions it makes for training new workers, vol- 
-unteer and paid. Does the district superintendent (or 


*It should include for some, full case work experience as well as 
opportunities for clerical work or friendly visiting. 

* There are furthermore not sufficient training schools to meet the needs 
of the country for trained workers. 


480 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


general secretary, or his assistant in an undistricted 
society) give definite training to these new members of 
the staff on the day’s work of the society? Is this supple- 
mented by opportunities for attendance regularly at a 
training class for paid workers in which background is 
presented for the technical training in the district and the 
relation of case work to community programs is made 
clear? In addition to the new employees, it is in order to 
ask what opportunities are offered old employees for fur- 
ther development. Are seminars or study groups of 
superintendents arranged where problems of peculiar in- 
terest to themselves may be discussed under leadership? 
Are sabbatical half years, as in one society, afforded to 
workers for study, recreation or travel? 

The need for opportunities for training for volunteers 
is probably even greater than for the paid worker who 
presumably comes with some training or experience. Are 
there regular training classes for volunteers? Are they 
graded to suit the varying needs of any body of volun- 
teers,—for example, for beginners, for friendly visitors, 
etc.? Has the district superintendent time to know each 
volunteer in more than a superficial way? Can he or she 
help with suggestions? Have they a place in the district 
headquarters where they can come without feeling like in- 
truders? Are the weekly case conferences so planned 
and conducted as to yield their maximum educational 
value for volunteers? Are old cases reported on from 
time to time and lessons indicated from some particular 
success or failure in the plan of treatment followed? 


MAINTAINING ESPRIT DE CORPS 


Effectiveness in social work is as much a matter of 
spirit as of mind or body. Every large business concern 
at all conscious of the lessons of social psychology not 
only recognizes the importance of developing and main- 
taining esprit de corps among its workers, but takes va- 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 481 


rious steps to do so. It is too often assumed that the ap- 
peal of social work is such as to make unnecessary any 
conscious attempt on the part of social agencies to develop 
esprit de corps. Assuming as axiomatic that esprit de 
corps increases efficiency, it is in order to ask what meas- 
ures are employed by a given society to this end. Is the 
atmosphere created by the executive head such as inspires 
loyalty in even the humblest worker? Are occasions 
regularly afforded for all the workers, irrespective of 
their tasks, to meet informally face to face? Is oppor- 
tunity ever provided for members of boards of directors 
and workers to meet? Are there social gatherings, ‘‘par- 
ties,” family dinners, etc., among the employees to arouse 
enthusiasm, acquaintanceship and esprit de corps? <A 
conception of the greatness of one’s task alone can pro- 
duce the highest efficiency. Are there meetings of the 
staff, directors and volunteers for inspiration, instruction 
and exchange of experience? 


THE SOCIETY AND THE PUBLIC 


As already noted, the second group of problems in the 
field of administration concerns the relation of the society 
in question to the public and introduces the following 
topics: Finance, Propaganda, Reports, Accessibility to 
those who desire to make use of it. 


FINANCES 


In addition to the problems common to financing any 
social agency not supported by taxation, a charity organ- 
ization society presents some problems peculiar to itself. 
For example, an important function of a charity organ- 
ization society is the education of the public to greater 
wisdom in its giving. Any methods of raising funds for 
a charity organization society which defeats this end is 
vicious, no matter how completely it fills the society’s 
treasury. Or again, it is generally conceded that a large 


482 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


pre-collected relief fund has a bad psychological effect 
on those persons in any community whose spirit of inde- 
pendence is in need of strengthening, and that it always 
has a tendency to become a substitute for good case work 
with its characteristic resourcefulness in meeting the 
financial side presented by many family problems. A 
satisfactory list of tests of efficiency covering this detail 
of organization must therefore include not only tests 
common to all self-supporting social agencies, but also 
some peculiar to charity organization societies. 

While a budget relates directly to the expenditures of 
money since it is a program financially expressed, it 
should have an important bearing on every campaign for 
funds. By making for a more careful and wise expen- 
diture of funds it also creates confidence in those en- 
trusted with the public’s money. It is a test of no little 
merit, therefore, to learn whether a given social agency 
has a real budget or only a statement of expenditures 
at the end of the year. To use money wisely is in the 
last analysis a more serious task than to get the money. 

Judging the efficiency of a charity organization society 
by the standards of community needs in general, it is not 
out of place to ask whether the society in question articu- 
lates its financial plans and program with those of other 
social agencies in the community. ‘This does not neces- 
sarily mean a financial federation, but a readiness to fit 
its financial campaigns into a program whose first aim is 
the greatest good to the community rather than to any 
particular social agency . 

The methods of raising money for social agencies 
vary greatly. They include subscriptions based on gen- 
eral appeals either through the mails, the press, the plat- 
form or by personal solicitation, membership dues, bene- 
fits, tag days, personal subscriptions for individual cases 
and joint appeals for all approved social agencies of the 
city. It is obvious that these are not all equally efficient, 
especially when judged in the light of the accepted objects 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 483 


of charity organization societies. By what tests may one 
judge the relative merits of these channels of reaching the 
public? In answering this question one must keep in mind 
the effect of the method in question on the society, on the 
public and finally on the clients of the society. Does the 
method under analysis create in the minds of those on 
the borderline between dependence and independence, 
the impression that an inexhaustible fund has been col- 
lected, into which they may dip for “their share”? For 
fear of this danger, some workers contend that there 
should never be general public appeals for relief. Above 
all, does the method used educate the public in principles 
of scientific case work or merely foster in the community 
the spirit of Lady Bountiful as is doubtless too often the 
fact when recourse is had to the institutions of charity 
balls, and bazaars, as sources of income. Does the 
method used make an appeal solely to a class or does it 
make for increasingly democratic support? The desir- 
ability of democratic support for a charity organization 
society illustrates the difference between certain standards 
that obtain in the world of business and the field of social 
work. In the former, the only test necessary is the cost 
of raising the dollar; in the latter, the number of indi- 
vidual contributions is equally vital. Few cognizant 
with the purposes of a charity organization society would 
contend that the more democratic basis of support en- 
tailing its greater expense does not represent a higher 
service to the community and hence greater efficiency. 
In-breeding of support and interest spells inefficiency in 
any line of social work. ‘Social work will not accomplish 
its really great purposes until it has mastered a way of 
getting the intelligent and contented support of a steadily 
expanding group of citizens.” 1? It must ever work to 
reduce that large group of society who give neither 
time nor money to social agencies through lack of vital 


_ +*William J. Norton, “City Planning in Social Work,” The Survey, 
~ Vol. XXXVI, p. 581 (1916). 


484 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


interest in social welfare and to increase at least the 
group of paying citizens who give of their money. The 
ideal, of course, is to add the great mass of people to 
that small body of citizens found in every community 
who give freely of their time and money to further the 
interests of social welfare.1 Accordingly, it is a test of 
no little importance for a charity organization society to 
know whether one person in 38 of the population con- 
tributes to its support or whether it is only one in 411;? 
whether the per capita contribution is five cents, ten 
cents, fifteen cents; or whether five per cent or fifty per 
cent of the subscribers have contributed for more than 
one year, for more than five, etc. 

In addition to the question of utilizing the most ef- 
ficient channels for raising a financial budget is the ques- 
tion of content of message used in reaching the pocket- 
books of the community. Here again one must keep in 
mind that not relief of distress alone, but the correct edu- 
cation of the public in matter of the scientific principles 
of social case work and understanding of the social 
causes Of poverty are parts of the program of every 
charity organization society worthy of the name. Does 
the appeal for funds, whether written or spoken, appeal 
solely to the emotions? Does it appeal to the head but 
only to miseducate, as when the appeal is to make the 
society a proxy in all the charitable relationships of life or 
support is urged on the basis of ‘‘saving” the contributor- 
to-be time and money? Does the message help build up 
an understanding of the great truth that in most social 
case work personal service, rather than material relief, 
is what counts for most, or does it make its appeal on the 
old-time plea that “every dollar given directly reaches 
the poor”? Is its method thus so unethical as to make 
the collection of its funds an obstacle to other socially 


*See John Melpolder, ‘“Democratizing Social Welfare Efforts,” The 
Survey, Vol. XXXVII, pp. 303-304 (1916). 

*The figures are real and not fictitious. They illustrate the value 
of the test for the two cities from which they were taken. 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 485 


necessary agencies in the collection of theirs? Finally, 
does the appeal foster the spirit of Lady Bountiful in 
the community or does it bring nearer the next step in 
an era of greater social justice? 

Of the various methods of raising money the letter of 
appeal is that most frequently used. In some cases it is 
the only means. We shall accordingly consider in some 
detail standards and tests of efficiency that are applic- 
able to it. Here the test of first importance is “cost of 
collection.” Is it two per cent, five per cent, ten per cent 
of the total amount collected? 1 It is obvious that the 
cost of collection depends, in turn, on a number of factors 
each subject to its respective tests. The first of these 
relates to the “quality” of the appeal. Does the society 
employ a trained financial secretary? If it is not large 
enough for such a sub-division of labor, does it employ 
the best talent at its disposal in writing its letters of 
appeal? Is the job of reaching the potential contributors’ 
altruistic nature taken as seriously as business concerns 
take the job of reaching man’s self-interest through their 
campaigns of advertising? In short, does the quality of 
the appeal, both in wording and spacing used, compare 
favorably with the best standards employed in commer- 
cial advertising? | 

Probably the biggest single factor in reducing the cost 
of collection of funds is the care bestowed upon the mail- 
ing list of non-contributors. Does the society maintain 
such a mailing list? Is it revised annually? Are new 
names constantly added? Is there any conscious at- 
tempt to democratize it by including names of persons on 
none of the lists of subscribers to important philan- 
thropies? Is the ‘‘appealee” ever given a chance to have 


*The cost of collection of the United Charities of Chicago is about 
2.9 percent of the total amount collected. A study by the Russell Sage 
Foundation shows that other leading charities in the United States of 
similar type have a somewhat larger collection cost but even those 
range from but 3 to 10 per cent. B.C. Roloff, “Profit in Appeals,” The 
Survey, Vol. XX XVIII p. 280 (1917). 


486 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


his name removed from the list by the use of a reply 
post-card? 

Of equal importance with the thought bestowed on the 
list of non-contributors is the thought and time expended 
in cultivating the contributor’s list. Is a study ever made 
of the financial death rate among contributors? If so, 
is it as low as fifteen per cent or as high as forty-eight per 
cent? Contributors are gained usually with considerable 
effort. One does not get the habit of contributing because 
of a single contribution. Are contributors thanked by 
personal letter in addition to formal receipt from the 
treasurer? Is educational work done all year by sending 
interesting accounts of the work of the society?! Does 
the annual report contain a clear-cut statement of stew- 
ardship for all funds collected? Is there intensive educa- 
tional work done to deepen the interest of those who 
have contributed for the first time or to regain the inter- 
est of contributors whose gifts have lapsed for one or ~ 
two years? Is any attempt made to develop gradually 
the interest of new contributors by letting them know 
something of the work done for individual families for 
whom their contributions are spent, thus utilizing the 
sound principle of pedagogy of beginning with the con- 
crete and moving toward abstract principles later? Is 
there a conscious attempt to strengthen the interest of 
contributors by enlisting them, when possible, in some 
piece of volunteer service, e. g., of turning to a contribu- 
tor, who is a lawyer, for legal advice in connection with 
the society’s work? Peoples’ interest usually grows to 
the extent that they give of themselves, and this often but 
awaits a definite opportunity. 

This leads logically to’ the question of financing 
case by case. ‘This method, which is distinctive of 
charity organization societies, has great value, because 
it offers an opportunity to educate the giver and also 

*The New York Society issues weekly bulletins describing in a most 


interesting fashion some one phase of its work. Its educational possi- 
bilities are limitless. 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 487 


reduces the necessity for maintaining large precollected 
relief funds with their attendant evils. Some societies 
make considerable use of this method of finance having 
special committees on family appeals; other societies 
have made little or no use of it. It, therefore, becomes 
a matter of importance to know the extent of special 
_ family appeal work of a given society. It may run as 
high as forty per cent, or as low as twenty per cent, or 
less. All other factors remaining the same, it is more 
_ than likely that that society which raises the largest part 
_ of its funds by the case-by-case method is doing the best 
educational job. 


PROPAGANDA 


Charity organization societies will ‘be subject to criti- 
cisms of an unwarranted kind until they educate the 
public to the real meaning of family rehabilitation and 
the important part that non-material relief plays in all 
such work. This can only be done by persistent efforts 
at community education. Mention has already been 
made of various methods available for this purpose.’ It 
only remains to point out some tests applicable in the field 
of propaganda. Does the propaganda, whether through 
the newspaper, the platform or the screen, bear the mark 
of sincerity, 7. e., is there an absence of the sensational, 
the overdrawn? Is the propaganda varied that it may 
hold public attention? Is it ethical in that any possible 
identity of a society’s clients is guarded against? This 
means a prohibition of the use of any personal photo- 
graphs. Is the work of the society ever kept in the fore- 
ground rather than the name of the general secretary? 

The press in America is the great channel through 
which public opinion is moulded. Efficient propaganda 
implies an efficient use of this agency. Does the society 
have a press committee to aid in getting the work of the 
society into the newspapers at regular intervals? Much 


*See page 457. 


488 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


material can be put into the form of “news” that has 
educational value, which in any other form would be 
valueless from the newspaper point of view. If there is 
no such committee, is it the conscious policy of the society 
to develop confidence in its work and methods on the 
part of the various city editors and reporters? + Is mate- 
rial in the form of advance copies of reports on work 
done sent regularly to the newspapers? Are the news- 
papers supplied with “time copy” covering accounts of 
special activities conducted by the society, such as the 
work of a wayfarers’ lodge, visiting housekeepers, etc.? 
Is this material presented in a form that is dignified and 
yet journalistic? . 


ANNUAL REPORTS 


An annual report is an account of stewardship and a 
record of work. It may be more by adding certain educa- 
tional features for propaganda purposes. It, however, 
should never be less.” In the following discussion we 
shall assign to the annual report but one function, namely, 
‘to report,” assuming that all propagandist material is 
published separately as circulars or bulletins. 

As trustees of other peoples’ money and dependent 
upon public confidence for their fullest measure of use- 
fulness, charity organization societies should seek to gain 
this confidence by an intelligent presentation of receipts 
and expenses. As such societies are in reality public serv- 
ice corporations, they should have no secrets from the 
public. 

No complete science of report-making has as yet been 


*One means of developing confidence is for the general secretary and 
as many of his staff as possible to become specialists in some field allied 
to the work of the society, e. g., vagrancy, desertion and non-support, 
disaster relief. Monographs’ and newspapers’ interviews carefully pre- 
pared go far in creating confidence based on a sound policy of publicity. 

*For an interesting plea for making the annual report reportorial 
rather than educational and propagandist see Karl de Schweinitz, “An 
Anatomy Most Melancholy,” The Survey, Vol. XXXV, pp. 509-510 


(1916). 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 489 


formulated, but many valuable methods have been 
wrought out by one society or another in the attempt 
to meet their own special needs. With these as a basis 
and in the light of the accepted object of all annual re- 
ports, certain tests of efficiency suggest themselves. It 
is axiomatic to say that a report succeeds or fails as it 
invites reading or not. The first test, therefore, relates 
to appearance. Is it pleasing in appearance? Does the 
typography, the spacing, use of illustrations and kind of 
paper each in turn conduce to reading? Once the report 
is in the reader’s hands, does its size invite one to go 
through it from cover to cover, or is it filled with ex- 
traneous matter such as a copy of the constitution and 
by-laws, names of the former presidents, etc.? 

Is the matter presented in a simple and direct fashion? 
Does the report stress the achievements of the society 
rather than call attention to personalities, be they direc- 
tors or members of the paid staff? Does it present a 
condensed and connected story of the year’s activities 
or merely string together a number of separate reports 
giving the activities of each of a number of departments 
or committees probably written by as many people? 

If illustrations are used, do they illustrate or merely 
occupy space that had better been used for other pur- 
poses? Are they well proportioned or do they sprawl 
over the page? Is greater use made of line drawings 
which are cheaper and believed by many advertisers more 
effective than is made of photographs? Are all diagrams 
used so accurately drawn as to tell the truth and so 
clearly presented as to need little explanation which, 
however, is always explicitly given where needed? 

Finally, is there some degree of uniformity in the use 
of statistics, and is there any attempt to work out a more 
or less standardized financial statement? ' 


*See Charity Organization Statistics, Report of the Committee on 
Statistics of the American Association of Societies for Organizing Charity 
published by the Charity Organization Department, Russell Sage Foun- 
dation (1915). 


490 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


ACCESSIBILITY 


The last set of tests relates to the accessibility of 
charity organization societies to those who desire to use 
them. It is obvious that the first essential to accessibility 
is, to be known. The question of publicity has already 
been discussed. Even after the work of a social agency 
is known, it is possible to encourage its use by the pub- 
lic. This does not mean that a charity organization so- 
ciety ought or could be a substitute for all the personal 
charity of a community. It does mean, however, that 
no individual or church should aid a family without first 
learning, through the social service exchange, whether 
such a family is known to the C. O. S. or some other social 
agency. Are charitably disposed citizens encouraged to 
use the exchange? If there is no municipal or other 
local provision for housing the homeless, does the C. O. S. 
maintain a Wayfarers’ Lodge that is always open or make 
other provision so that no citizen accosted by a man or 
woman asking a night’s lodging need feel compelled to 
give money to the applicant under conditions which 
usually make a knowledge of the facts impossible. Does 
the society provide the public with tickets good for a 
night’s lodging with directions for locating the shelter 
clearly indicated? 

An important element in accessibility is, of course, the 
numbers of hours a day that the offices of a charity or- 
ganization society are open alike to the public at large 
and to clients. How many hours a day are the district 
offices open? Practice varies, the range being from two 
hours to all day, while in at least one city the central office 
is kept open until midnight. The knowledge of such an 
office being closed has an unfortunate effect on the 
amount of indiscriminate giving on the street that goes 
on to a greater or less degree in every community. A 
charity organization society which has its doors open to 
the poor and rich alike during a full working day is ren- 


TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 4QI 


dering more efficient service to its community than one 
which is open but half the time. 

Finally, does the society assume that ‘“‘the poor” will 
always turn to a charity organization society if in want? 
To assume so is to lose sight of the universal facts of 
pride, sensitiveness, misunderstanding and inertia exist- 
ing in all classes. A charity organization society living 
up to its ideals will strive to have its office as dignified 
and as accessible as those of a local doctor or public 
health center. While interviews will, whenever possible, 
be conducted in the home of the client, as already pointed 
out, privacy should be provided at the office of the society 
for those instances when a home interview is not pos- 
sible. It is not too much to expect the district office of a 
charity organization society to become a kind of neigh- 
borhood center for those seeking advice of one kind or 
another. The test here is similar to one already proposed, 
namely, are the clients of a charity organization society 
like the satisfied customer who tells others of the satis- 
factory service that he has enjoyed? 


CHAPTER XII 
PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS 


THE path of the critic is at all times fraught with 
pitfalls. It is especially so when his subject is a move- 
ment stretching back almost half a century and including 
within its scope units in all stages of development. 
Generalization is therefore difficult if not impossible. 
Throughout, the reader should remember that it is one 
thing to say that the charity organization movement is a 
failure and another thing to point out wherein the move- 
ment has failed. 

As an institution is sometimes unfairly criticized for 
being something else than it is, it is well to recall 
that a charity organization society “does not attempt, 
as an organization, to eliminate poverty. If that were 
its purpose, it would be stamped as a failure from begin- 
ning to end. It agrees with the keenest sociologists of 
our time that far-reaching and radical reforms are needed 
for this. What it does aim to do, is to relieve distress 
wisely and sympathetically, and to interpret to the com- 
munity, the facts concerning the extent and degree of 
poverty, so that the community itself, knowing well the 
nature of the evil, may be able to apply the remedy.” * 
A charity organization society’s especial concern is family 
rehabilitation,” 7. e., the restoration of dependent families 
to a normal life of independence by a plan of “treat- 
ment” based on a careful study of each family coming 
under its care, and only indirectly is it concerned 


*Annual Report of the Associated Charities of Colorado Springs, 
LOTTI. Di7. 

*For a more detailed discussion of the nature and function of a 
charity organization society, see Chapter IV, pp. 94-113. 


492 


PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS 493 


with attacking the adverse social conditions mak- 
ing for poverty. This does not mean that many 
charity organization societies have not directly taken 
part in attacking the social causes of exploitation and 
hardship, such as unsanitary housing, child labor, extor- 
tionate charges by pawnshops, salary loan and chattel 
mortgage agencies and uncompensated industrial in- 
juries. However, the resources of the vast majority of 
societies are limited, and the values of specialization and 
division of labor inhere as much in social work as in 
any other field. “But that there are social causes of de- 
pendence and degeneracy, and that it is a proper function 
of organized charity to lay bare these causes and to aid 
in removing them, is long since established beyond ques- 
tion.” } 

Before discussing specific criticisms of the charity 
organization movement, reference should be made to that 
type of critic who condemns efforts at human ameliora- 
tion as a violation of the processes of natural selection, 
fraught with grave dangers and often real evils. 

The only answer which charity organizationists in com- 
mon with other social workers can make to this type of 
criticism is that in the world as constituted to-day, irre- 
spective of philanthropy, natural selection is often work- 
ing far from eugenically. The institution of private prop- 
erty alone may make possible the survival of biologic 
weaklings, while the health of others eugenically born is 
not infrequently undermined by insufficient nourishment 
in infancy, by occupational disease or enforced residence 
in the noisome dwelling of some so-called slum. 

Wherever individual charity organization societies fail 
to heed the lessons of McCulloch’s study of the Tribe 
of Ishmael and Dugdale’s study of the Jukes, they are 
more justly open to the criticism of the thoroughgoing 


evolutionist. It must, however, be borne in mind that 


*Edward T. Devine, “Prejudices Against Organized Charity,” an edi- 


torial, The Survey, Vol. XXVII, p. 1325 (1911). 


494 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


during the first two decades of the movement, the public 
was apparently neither prepared, if indeed it is yet, for 
the program of segregating the ‘feeble-minded nor even 
for a public hearing of the claims of eugenics. At the 
National Conferences of Charities and Correction, the 
problem of the feeble-minded was repeatedly stated, but 
it seldom got beyond this. Occasionally the wrong to 
society and to unborn children of keeping together par- 
ents mentally and physically below par was pointed out in 
an annual report of some society, but little else hap- 
pened. One cannot but regret that the appreciation of 
this wrong is too frequently lacking, even to-day, in the 
discussion of family problems, both by charity organiza- 
tion societies and child welfare agencies. 

Critics of charity organization as a method of meeting 
the problem of human need divide themselves into three 
groups. There is first, that part of the Lay public who 
feel that so-called scientific charity has lost the warmth 
and value of the charity of an earlier day; second, the 
“radicals”? who feel that all charity is merely palliative 
work and therefore out of place in the modern world, 
and third, social workers, often laborers, within the move- 
ment who believe that the movement has either fallen 
short of its possibilities or has drifted far from first prin- 
ciples.” 

Some of the criticisms amount to nothing more than 
mere prejudices, but where such is the case the author 
does not believe that he is excused from attempting to 
reach a sympathetic understanding of the grounds under- 


*Mr. Robert Treat Paine, in the 20th Annual Report of Boston 
Associated Charities declares: “Let civilization beware of promoting 
the birth of the most unfit, by keeping families together by public out- 
door relief, when they had better be broken up, and would be broken 
up if left to themselves.” 

*There is still another class of critics, fortunately not large, which 
need not detain us here, since the burden of their charges are personal 
attacks on the character and honesty of social workers. Unfortunately 
their contributions gain a wider reading than they merit, because pub- 
lished by certain popular muck-raking magazines and newspapers with 
mud-slinging tendencies. 4 


PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS 495 


lying them. Still other of the criticisms show such super- 
ficial knowledge of the nature of a charity organization 
society and of the tasks that confront it that one would 
be tempted to pass them by were they less common or 
were they made with less enthusiasm for the common 
welfare. Some of the criticisms of the first two groups 
are mutually destructive, creating thereby the belief in 
more impartial minds that the truth lies somewhere be- 
tween. 


Tue LAy PuBLic AS CRITIC 


Perhaps the most common criticisms of charity or- 
ganization societies are the charges that they are “‘cold” 
and delight in “red tape.” To such critics these societies 
exist “not to serve, but to search.” To them a social 
investigation connotes the ‘third degree” of a police 
station. ‘They believe that at best its only function is 
to corroborate the statements of the client. That both 
charges are foreign to the spirit of charity organization 
hardly needs to be reiterated here. That they are un- 
founded is the belief of the author based on close obser- 
vation of a decade, covering a number of societies and a 
still larger number of workers in all sections of the coun- 
try. 

_ By this, the author does not mean that there is not, or 
possibly better, has not been, some real basis for this kind 
of antagonism. Authentic cases where a society has been 

informed after three weeks of investigation that it need 

not trouble itself further as the baby was dead and the 
mother probably dying, have been extremely rare in the 
history of the movement. All well equipped societies 
have their emergency relief work so well organized that 
| they can guarantee prompt action with every case. The 
practice of granting whatever “interim relief” is neces- 

' sary, pending an adequate investigation, is according to 

the writer’s observation universal. Certainly the friends 


496 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


of charity organization may never hope to see this criti- 
cism die unless such is the case. 

It is easy to understand the origin of the criticism 
of “coldness” and “red-tape.”” The whole weight of tra- 
dition about giving to the poor apparently runs counter to 
discrimination in relief giving. “Let not your right hand 
know what your left hand doeth.” ‘Give to him that 
asketh and from him that would borrow turn not away,” 
are applied literally by many. Moreover, as the Webbs 
have pointed out, “there are still many good people among 
us who instinctively resent any discouragement of the 
personal impulse to give alms or to perform ‘good 


works’ as a religious duty by which we acquire merit or 


do glory unto God, quite irrespective of the effect really 
produced upon the recipients and beneficiaries. To them, 
at least in theory, personal charity is everything.” + They 
comprise the ranks from which are recruited Lords and 
Ladies Bountiful. To them social service is not charity 
—never can be charity. It seldom occurs to Lord or Lady 
Bountiful that, although there is great warmth about 
their charity at the moment, it is often not the steady 


supply that persists in season and out, which characterizes 


all sincere sympathy for the distressed. Subscriptions to 
charity balls can hardly take the place of that personal 
interest of social workers in the less fortunate of the city, 
that extends through the long hot summers when many 
such subscribers are at shore or mountains. 

On the score of ‘‘red-tape,” it should be recalled that 
the attitude of mind that sees in social diagnosis and 
treatment an analogy to the diagnosis and treatment of a 
physician marks a big step in social thinking. It comes 
only as the result of some study and reflection on the 


problems of relief and often only as a result of practical 


experience in trying to solve them. The charge of too 


*Sidney and Beatrice Webb, “The Prevention of Destitution,” 
p. 222 (1911). The author hastens to add here that some of the 
staunchest defenders of the principles of charity organization are, and 
some of the pioneers in the movement, both in England and America 
were clergymen or laymen prominent in their respective denominations. 


i. 


PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS 497 


much “red tape” is quite naturally made by those who 
fail to see the frequent complexity of many social situa- 
tions. Such being the case, it is not at all surprising 
that this charge also dies hard. 

A criticism as widespread, if not as old as those just 
discussed, charges that under the methods of charity or- 
ganization, “‘it costs a dollar to give a dollar away.” The 
favorite form of this criticism is usually an analysis of 
the budget of the local charity organization society under 
the categories of salaries, printing and postage, carfare, 
rent, telephone, etc., and “‘relief.”” The results are then 
published in a local newspaper under some such startling 
caption as “If you give the —--——_—— Charity Organi- 
zation Society One Dollar, only Twenty-eight Cents of It 
Ever Reaches the Poor and Destitute.” 

The basis for this type of criticism is to be found in 
such dense ignorance as to the rudiments of the principles 
of charity organization that an attempt to answer it 
here would be impossible were not the major part of what 
precedes in this volume an answer in itself. Suffice it 
now to recall one or two salient points of such an answer. 
First, strictly speaking, a society for organizing charity 
is an agency whose very purpose is to correlate the serv- 
ices and relief, both personal and corporate, found in 
every city. It is not an additional relief society. Sec- 
ondly, the unenlightened poor clamors for money (and 
the utterly unenlightened philanthropist joins his cry) 
as the ignorant sick do for medicine. A doctor with- 
out medicine is often worth more than medicine without 
a doctor. Few complain because a doctor’s services cost 
more than his medicine. The writer regrets that space 
does not permit a rehearsal here of typical case histories 
that illustrate the truth that material relief is but an in- 
cident to the work in hand of the family social agency.'. 
‘On an average, two families out of every three under the 
care of charity organization societies do not require as- 


*See case history given on pp. 139, 140. 


498 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


sistance in the form of groceries, clothing, or other ma- 
terial things. For the remaining third, the skilled worker 
uses relief incidentally precisely as the physician uses his 
material aids and equipment. It is the skill of the physi- 
cian and the intelligent work done by the trained case 
worker that count. 

Not only does the criticism in question carry little 
weight because it entirely misunderstands the nature of 
the work which it criticizes, but it is unfair in trying to 
state that which it is impossible from the very nature of 
the case to state. Charity organization societies cannot 
tell what it costs to administer relief because it has no 
agents or machinery engaged in that activity. “How,” 
asks a leader in the movement, ‘“‘can a school tell what 
it costs to administer the crayon and ink used in the edu- 
cation of pupils, or a doctor what it costs to administer 
his medicines, or an inventor what it costs to administer 
the supplies of his laboratories?” * As another leader 
asks, “‘When people manufacture shoes, do they charge 
up the cost of all labor that goes into their making to the 
administration account? What is spent in the office of a 
charitable society on a bookkeeper, on a collector, on 
office rent, on gas, on heat, should be charged to the ad- 
ministration account; but what is spent on the labor of 
devoted men and women who give their lives to mending 
the broken fortunes of the needy, doing for them every 
conceivable service from the lowliest to the highest, surely 
to charge all that against the cost of ‘giving away a dollar’ 
is a very stupid thing.” ? 

Beside the foregoing objection to the method of fig- 
uring the cost of “giving a dollar away,” there remains 
the further objection that every charity organization so- 
ciety is instrumental in securing from kith and kin of the 
unfortunate, his friends, church, lodge, etc., considerable 

*E. T. Devine, ‘Prejudices Against Organized Charity,” an editorial, 


The Survey, Vol. XXVII, p. 1326 (1911). 
?M. E. Richmond, “The Good Neighbor,” pp. 137-138 (1908). 


PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS 499 


sums for his use. These amounts in toto often greatly 
exceed the money invested in the salaries of the workers 
in question. These funds, however, play no part in the 
figures which go to make up the budget, on the analysis 
of which is based the charge that it ‘costs a dollar to 
give a dollar away.” Ignoring, therefore, the value of the 
_work of these visitors in stimulating the motive power 
that enables dependent families to lift themselves into 
independence, the workers often repay their salaries in 
the money and services they secure from outside sources 
for their clients. This ignores still further the worth to 
the rest of the community of families that are self- 
supporting rather than dependent. 

The mischief which this type of criticism does is often 
far-reaching. In more than one small community the 
work has remained in a weak condition because those in 
control, fearing the criticism just discussed, have failed to 
pay an adequate salary to secure the kind of services 
necessary. ‘Truly, the laborer is worthy of his hire and 
in no field is second-rate service more expensive than 
in that of charity organization. 

The persistence of this particular criticism is due in 
part to the slowness whereby the public gains an under- 
standing of the principles of scientific charity! and in 
part to a policy on the part of certain “yellow” journals 
whereby they hope to gain favor by exploiting a popular 
prejudice even though it involve a pernicious distortion 
and suppression of essential facts. 

Some in the movement have also been partly respon- 
sible by the apologetic attitude that they have taken 
toward the question of overhead expenses. When after 
two decades, the secretary of one of the oldest societies in 
the country stated in a public meeting and apparently 

*As early as 1882 the founder of the Buffalo Society wrote “The 
only serious objection, however, which has been made to the Society’s 


plan is on the score of expense.” S. H. Gurteen, “Handbook of Charity 
_ Organization,” p. 64. 


500 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


with pride, “that not one cent of the money contributed 
to it by the public is used for running expenses,” ? it 
seems as though the day were far distant when the ‘“‘ex- 
penses of administration” might be viewed as so much 
the best use a society makes of its money that one could 
almost wish it all went that way. Some day it may. 


THE RADICAL AS CRITIC 


The background of the next group of critics is usually 
quite different from that of those whose views have al- 
ready been discussed. ‘The first group do not oppose 
charity organization societies because they are charitable, 
but because they are not charitable enough. The present 
group of critics is opposed to charity because to them it 
is a poor substitute for social justice. If relief is ever 
needed, it should be public rather than private because it 
will partake more of the nature of justice and less of the 
nature of charity. The first group are usually the con- 
servatives, while the second group draws its strength 
from the radicals. This does not mean, however, that a 
socialist, single taxer or capitalist may not believe in the 
principles of charity organization. 

In criticizing private charity, the radicals point out 
that it is always in danger of being influenced by the 
sentimental considerations of its financial supporters. 
This they contend is far less true of a public relief system 
which is a part of the vast machinery of government. It 
is further pointed out that private charity is more likely 
_to injure the self-respect of the poor than public charity, 
especially if it is possible to develop a sentiment that 
public relief is the right of those who need it and therefore 
not stigmatizing. Such critics maintain that it is impos- 
sible to develop any such sentiment with respect to pri- 
vate charity.2. With what ought to obtain rather than 


* Anon., Charities, Vol. V, No. 27, p. 13 (1900). 
* Maurice Parmelee, “Poverty and Social Progress,” pp. 269-275 (1916). 


PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS 5OI 


with what actually does obtain, we are not here con- 
cerned. The present facts on each of the above counts, 
as far as charity organization societies are concerned, 
give such criticisms little more than academic interest. 
In the first place, on the whole, the least sentimental 
and least degrading system of relief obtaining to-day 
is that of charity organization societies. Any student 
knows that public out-door relief in America to-day with 
the possible exception of not over a dozen instances, is 
characterized by inadequacy, sentiment and loss of self- 
respect. That such should not be the case and that many 
charity organization workers wish that such were not the 
case, does not alter the grim facts as to the relative failure 
to date in America of public out-door relief. Surely until 
this is changed, charity organization societies should not 
be criticized for stepping into the breach. They may be 
more justly open to criticism if they oppose state action, 
qua State action. The State cannot do its work unless 
it is moralized and vitalized by the individual. If char- 
ity organizationists, because of a Spencerian interpreta- 
tion of the functions of the State, withhold their sympathy 
and help from all State efforts toward social reform, 
then indeed they must face the criticism of many forward 
looking and liberal thinkers. Although family case work- 
ers are usually quite practical as to what to expect under 
present conditions in the way of high standards of case 
work in public departments, few, if any, of the present- 
day leaders of the movement withhold either sympathy 
or help from any honest effort on the part of public 
officials to improve the quality of their work. The char-. 
ity organization movement in America is standing in- 
creasingly for better standards of work rather than for 
any theoretic distinction as to whether the workwe done 
publicly or privately. At worse, it would be hardly fair 
to charge its followers with more than too negative an 
_ attitude toward governmental action. 

A more serious objection to charity organization socie- 


502 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


ties from this group of critics is that to a considerable 
extent such societies stand in the way of fundamental 
reforms which would remove, in part or entirely, the con- 
ditions of poverty which they try to ameliorate. Their 
work is held ‘‘second best,” a palliative, not the real 
thing, not ‘‘drastic.”” In short, it is held that charity is 
concerned with the effects rather than with the causes 
of poverty. Sometimes such criticisms come from quite 
sympathetic sources, as is evidenced by the following: 


“T am trying to do what I can to relieve those who are 
suffering or without opportunity,” writes such a critic, 
in reply to an appeal for funds made by a charity or- 
ganization society, “but long experience and observation 
have convinced me that benevolent donations can do little 
more than relieve a few scattered cases of distress. While 
one family or individual is being raised from degradation 
by the strenuous efforts of the charitably inclined, an- 
other family or individual—next door perhaps—is plunged 
from self-respect into degradation by economic pres- 
sure... .” This writer concludes, “And so, though I 
sympathize with you as with all who are trying to serve 
humanity, I must refuse your appeal.” 4 


The point of view here expressed is by no means novel 
nor in some of its aspects is it limited to those outside 
the movement. As early as 1893, Robert Treat Paine, 
in an address read at the International Congress of Char- 
ities, Correction and Philanthropy at Chicago, raised the 
question: 


“Has not the new charity organization movement too 
long been content to aim at a system to relieve or even 
uplift judiciously by single cases without asking if there’ 
are not prolific causes permanently at work to create 
want, vice, crime, disease, and death, and whether these 
causes may not be wholly or in a large degree eradicated? 
If such causes of pauperism exist, how vain to waste our 


*See Letter to The Survey by Frederic Almy, The Survey, Vol. 
MAME: Di 4at LOLs 








PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS 503 


_ energies on single cases of relief, when society should 
_ rather aim at removing the prolific sources of all the 
' woe.” } 


Again no less a leader in the movement than the foun- 
_ der of the New York Charity Organization Society, Jo- 

_ sephine Shaw Lowell, wrote in similar vein: “If the work- 
ing people had all they ought to have, we should not have 
the paupers and criminals.” ” 

__ It may be pointed out in passing that those who wrote 
_ in the foregoing vein can hardly be justly charged with 
_ either too great a pre-occupation with the relief of dis- 
_ tress rather than with its prevention or too great an 
- emphasis on the factor of character in poverty and too 
little on that of environment. It must be admitted, 
_ however, that many contributors to present-day charity 
_ lack social vision. Having no idea of the social causes 
of poverty they still divide all poor into “worthy” and 
~ “unworthy.” 

To the charge of family social work being palliative, 
_ the obvious answer is that we have with us here and now, 
people in distress, victims, granted, of great social mal- 

_ adjustments and, if you like, of an entirely wrong eco- 
nomic system, but nevertheless—people in misery and 
distress. To those who cry “justice, not charity,” it 
should be pointed out that there is no justice in letting 
a tubercular man with five little children dependent upon 
him for support, die of the disease, when charity may be 
_ the only means of restoring him to health. It is not jus- 

tice to let a widowed mother go out and toil all day in 
a laundry, when charity may keep her at home with her 

children. To do away with charity because the world 

_is still unjust would be like doing away with the relief 

_work of the Red Cross because we have not abolished 
_ war. We cannot sacrifice the victims of present-day in- 


*See Bliss, Encyclopedia of Social Reform, p. 936 (ed. 1908). 
*W.R. Stewart, The Philanthropic Work of Josephine Shaw Lowell, 


pp. 358-359 (rorr). 


504 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


justice, to an ideal justice of the future. Few will deny 
that humanity alone demands that human beings shall not 
starve in our midst. Our altruistic instincts whose roots 
run back to a time before the dawn of history would 
probably not permit of such a course even if our inherited 
traditions of religion and humanitarianism did. The sen- 
timents of justice, of brotherhood and all the finer social 
emotions upon which the progress of society depends 
demand that these individuals shall be aided in the spirit 
of social solidarity—the spir.t of charity. The brother- 
hood of the future, whether it be that of the régime of 
Socialism, of the Single Taxer or of any other group, will 
be long delayed if the spirit of brotherhood as it may now 
find expression in individual or collective charitable efforts 
is not only tolerated but intelligently encouraged. 

In short, the roots of both charity and social justice 
are so intertwined in the soil of social solidarity that we 
cannot uproot one without uprooting the other. “Charity 
and Justice are not opposed, but supplementary terms. 
Charity is the forerunner and guide of social justice, 
always breaking new ground and preparing the way for 
its sister, Justice.” The charity of to-day becomes the 
justice of to-morrow, but with this done, charity does not 
cease to exist. In one sense, the end and aim of all char- 
ity is no charity; in another, the end and aim of all 
charity is more charity. There is a charity that is a sub- 
stitute for justice; of this we can never have too little. 
There is also a charity that goes hand-in-hand with jus- 
tice; of this we can never have too much. “The spirit of 
charity still seeks adequate expression, refusing to be con- 
tent with the smaller things thus far accomplished in her 
name. She asserts her right to be against every assault, 
relinquishing with joy to justice or to enlightened selfish- 
ness each separate task which she has taught man to 
perform for man, but finds straightway other means of 
lightening the load of sorrow and of sin, of giving hope 
and peace where selfishness and justice have still been 


PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS 505 


blind.” + In short, the justice of to-day was the charity of 
yesterday. Charity to-day may be justice to-morrow. 

Charity is the basis of much present-day justice. It 
may also be the superstructure built upon foundations of 
_ to-day’s view of what constitutes social justice. Thus, 
charity to-day may step in “to relieve the situation where 
justice has partially failed.” ? It becomes in a sense ‘‘af- 
fectionate justice” in that it wisely combines heart with 
head just as St. Paul combined head with heart when 
he writes on the one hand of a love of one’s kind, greater 
than that expressed in bestowing all one’s goods to 
feed the poor, or giving one’s body to be burned, and on 
the other, “If any man will not work, neither shall he 
eat.” 3 

All other arguments aside for the present, the problem 
narrows down to a choice between relief that is chaotic 
and pauperizing and the treatment of a family in distress 
in a way that is constructive in so far as it endeavors to 
help its members out of their poverty rather than to help 
them in their poverty. That some are engaged in the 
work of prevention should not blind their eyes to the fact 
that they are free to devote all their time to such work be- 
cause others are caring for the immediate problems of dis- 
tress. The writer is not unmindful of the fact that there 
remains the question of the relative amounts of time and 
energy that wisdom dictates should be devoted to each 
kind of endeavor. Usually, however, an increase of one 
type of activity soon increases the amount of the other 
type of work. ‘This, however, is not relevant to the pres- 
ent discussion. Both kinds of activity are needed. Society 
must care for its unfortunate members and at the same 
time not leave undone work preventing the needless 
production of more misery. Temperament and training 


1Edward T. Devine, “The Spirit of Charity,” Charities, Vol. VIII, 
p. 45 (1902). 

*F. H. Wines, “Sociology and Philanthropy,” Annals of the American 
Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. XII, p. 55 (1898). 

STI Thessalonians, III; tro. 


506 = + CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


may be the best guide for each individual as to where 
he or she shall put the emphasis, but it must ever remain 
true that while man is man, he cannot neglect his duty as 
citizen to help his neighbor in distress simply because he 
is interested in the large causes which promise big results 
in some distant or even near future. 

It need hardly be pointed out here that such charity 
is not incompatible with the ideals of democracy, were 
not the movement the object of this study so frequently 
denounced as undemocratic. It should be recalled that 
the need for charity has ever been accepted by the most 
democratically minded. This harmony of ideals is 
quaintly expressed in the following address to the mem- 
bers of the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society at their 
annual meeting in 1795: 


“The necessity of charity is clearly announced by the 
whole structure of the human system. The sum of pros- 
perity, like the natural sun of the universe, shines not 
with perpetual brightness anywhere. Clouds are always 
interfering and obstructing its genial influence and over 
whose head they will gather, or how long they will con- 
tinue, is known only to Him whom the winds and clouds 
obey. If we enjoy the sunshine of the hour, it is equally 
our duty and our policy to relieve him who is suffering 
in the shade of adversity, and when, in turn, he enjoys 
the calm and we become involved in the tempest, we 
shall merit and if he possesses the gratitude of his na- 
ture, we shall receive of him a shelter from its incle- 
mency.” ? | 


There is the same unquestioned acceptance of democ- 
racy and charity in the words of Mrs. Josephine Shaw 
Lowell: 


‘We must help people; we all need help, and always 
shall. Being finite beings, it is impossible to imagine 
that, in any future existence even, we should ever reach 


* George R. Minot, An address to the Members of the Massachusetts 
Charitable Fire Society at their Annual Meeting, p. 11 (1795). 


ee 


PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS 507 


a point where we should be self-sufficient and need no help 
from others. Since, then, every human being needs help, 
it is of course the duty of every human being to give 
help.” 1 History is replete with instances of the need of 
lifting from the shoulders of some, part at least, of the 
inevitable and heavy “‘costs of progress” that, by chance, 
fall to them. 

Although a Mrs. Lowell may thus approach her task, it 
is true that the spirit of democracy is making rapid in- 
roads into the so-called charitable relationship which 
too often obtains between benefactor and_ beneficiary. 
The complacency of the old-fashioned charitable individ- 
ual is gone forever. Miss Jane Addams has well pointed 
out that ‘many of the difficulties in philanthropy come 
from an unconscious division of the world into the phi- 
lanthropists and those to be helped. It is an assumption 
of two classes, and against this class assumption our 
democratic training revolts as soon as we begin to act on 
it. . . . Formerly when it was believed that poverty was 
synonymous with vice and laziness, and that the prosper- 
ous man was the righteous man, charity was administered 
harshly with a good conscience; for the charitable agent 
really blamed the individual for his poverty, and the very 
fact of his own superior prosperity gave him a certain 
consciousness of superior morality. Since then we have 
learned to measure‘ by other standards, and the money- 
earning capacity, while still rewarded out of all propor- 
tion to any other, is not respected as exclusively as it was; 
and its possession is by no means assumed to imply the 
possession of the highest moral qualities. We have 
learned to judge men in general by their social virtues as 
well as by their business capacity, by their devotion to 
intellectual and disinterested aims, and by their public 


_ spirit, and we naturally resent being obliged to judge cer- 


ary 


tain individuals solely by the industrial side for no other 
reason than that they are poor. Our democratic instinct 


*Mrs. Charles R. Lowell, “The Evils of Investigation and Relief,” 
Charities, Vol. I, p. 10 (1898). 


508 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


constantly takes alarm at this consciousness of two 
standards.” ? 

It now remains to ask whether family social workers 
as a group are conscious of the ‘“‘two standards” to which 
Miss Addams takes exception. 

Francis H. McLean replies: ‘There is nothing more 
finely democratic than real family social work. Its very 
fundamental purpose is to release the highest possible 
impulses of the families affected wherever those impulses 
are interfered with or handicapped by personal or groupal 
or social elements.” ? 

Joseph Lee, long a student of modern philanthropy, 
in no uncertain terms, points out that the principles of 
modern charity are “fundamentally and characteristically 
democratic; that they are not only germane to the demo- 
cratic spirit, but are a peculiarly authentic, accurate, and 
important expression of it.” ° 

His reasons repay examination. In brief they are that 
both democracy and charity emphasize the value of 
the individual, and democracy “believes with modern 
charity that it is not what you do for a man, but what he 
works out for himself, not the government you give him, 
but that which he himself maintains, that makes the es- 
sential contribution to his life and character.” * Again 
the great work of democracy is education and the 
methods of education in a democracy are “but the same 
methods that have been independently discovered by 
organized charity; the same methods, indeed, which will 
be followed wherever men are consciously and sincerely 
bent upon the development of the spiritual nature—upon 
the nurture of man as the spirit that he really is. The 
only difference is that in school these methods are applied 


* Jane Addams, “The Subtle Problems of Charity,” Atlantic Monthly, 
Vol. LXXXIII, p. 163 (1899). 

*Francis H. McLean, “On Making Our Societies Democratic,” The 
Family, Vol. I, p. 9 (1920). 

*Joseph Lee, “Charity and Democracy,” Charities and The Com- 
mons, Vol. XVII, p. 388 (1906). 

* Ibid., p. 392. 


PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS 509 


not to the mature and unsuccessful, but chiefly to the 
young and normal life.” } 

Since the spirit and methods of modern charity and 
democracy are not incompatible, there exists an obliga- 
tion on the side of both democracy and charity to see 
that any chasm due to misunderstanding is breached. 
Democracy must learn of the scientific technique and con- 
structive methods of work that modern charity is evolv- 
ing, and family social workers must strive to understand 

_ the ideals and humility of the truly democratic. 


CHARITY ORGANIZATION WORKERS AS CRITICS 


Satisfaction with one’s achievement and not a con- 
sciousness of failure to reach one’s ideal, is a grievous 
fault. If charity organization workers are at times critical 
of others, many have not failed to develop the critical fac- 
-ulty toward their own work. They know that a fine 
theory often finds safe and most comfortable harborage 
side by side with most commonplace practice. How- 
ever, they recognize that, as already pointed out, it is one 
thing to say that a movement has failed and another 
matter to point out its failures. 

One of the most frequent criticisms of charity organi- 
zation work by leaders in the movement is the failure of 
many societies to resist the temptation of lowering their 
“standards of work under the plea of overwork. This 
pressure of overwork is doubtless due in many places 
to the belief that the local charity organization society 
should have a monopoly of relief-giving. Rather than 
letting or encouraging others to give, some societies have 
helped this belief by creating the impression that de- 
pendency is their especi>! task. They have “pauperized”’ 
the charitable spirit in their respective communities and 

piled up tasks for themselves of such size that the finan- 
cial burden has been too great for thorough case work, 


* Joseph Lee, “Charity and Democracy,” Charities and The Commons, 
Vol. XVII, p. 394 (1906). 


510 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


and quantity rather than quality of service has almost 
unconsciously and inevitably been the result. 

The realization of the danger of this condition has led 
those who hold high the value of having family social 
workers develop a sound technique of case work, to advo- 
cate that each society should limit the intake of its cases 
so as to improve the quality of the output on the theory 
that it is more important that charity organization socie- 
ties should hold high the standards of case work than 
that they should attempt to take all cases that may be 
referred to them. This is in harmony with the concep- 
tion of a charity organization society as merely a tool, 
whereby society in the more complex conditions of 
modern living may express some of its charity more 
efficiently than as an organization which claims a monop- 
oly of all the work of family rehabilitation in a given 
community, thereby relieving individuals of their old-time 
obligations of true neighborliness. Should an emergency 
arise, it is further maintained that it is better in the long 
run to handle a few cases according to the highest stand- 
ards, even though others may receive less thorough treat- 
ment, than to handle many cases half well. A high stand- 
ard of work, so the argument runs, will not only in time 
create a demand for such a grade of work for all cases, 
but it has a most beneficial psychological effect on the 
daily practice of the case worker when the rush of work 
tends to hammer down all standards. The danger of 
“emergency habits” persisting after the emergency is 
over must be avoided. 

Failure to limit intake to improve the quality of the 
output is often reflected in the matter of keeping case 
records. Much progress has been made in this direction.* 
It will be some time, however, before the rank and file of 
societies approximate in practice the standards already 
worked out. 


*See Ada E. Sheffield, “The Social Case History” (1920). Also 
“Charity Organization Statistics,” Russell Sage Foundation (1915). 


PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS SII 


Although the singling out of relief from the many 
features of work for needy families is to be deprecated, 
_its importance has made it the subject of much discus- 
sion. Certainly an outstanding criticism of charity or- 
ganization societies on the technical side of their work 
has centered about the adequacy of their relief work. 
That it has been inadequate has been admitted frankly 
by not a few workers in the ranks. In practically no 
place visited by the author was it admitted that the budget 
was anything like adequate to the demands made upon 
it. In supplying the material needs of the poor, too 
often have charity organization societies failed to live up 
to the accepted standards of living of our highest authori- 
ties. Too often have they been responsible for the 
growth of day nurseries. Too seldom have they worked 
to lessen their number. 

It is apparent to the impartial observer that, not 
ignoring other factors, the one big fact will not down that 
had private charity been able to grant adequate relief to 
all its cases, especially to widows with children, the soil 
would not have been so well prepared for the acceptance 
since 1911 of the agitation for legislation for widows’ pen- 
sions. When the public came to realize the fact that 
children were being separated from their mothers for 
the sole cause of poverty (it mattered not to them 
whether the percentage was high as the friends of widows’ 
pension legislation claimed or low as the opponents 
proved), something had to be done. Opposition could 
not stem the tide. A new temper was abroad in the land. 
A putting forward of a program at the eleventh hour that 
claimed that the right solution of the problem was to work 
for measures that would cut down the number of widows 
and reduce the amount of inefficiency among those who re- 
mained, instead of turning to the state for adequate funds 
for present widows, came too late. Had charity organiza- 
tion societies frankly stated a decade earlier, the size 
_of the burden of the widow with children that they were 


512 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


struggling to meet, had they more boldly stated their 
need and advanced at the same time the supplementary 
program of prevention just mentioned, the writer ques- 
tions in his own mind whether the country would have 
been swept by the wave of widows’ pension legislation 
through which it passed, so much of which has been hasty 
and ill-considered. It is too early to tell in most, if not 
all places, just what the ultimate effect of this new type 
of legislation is to be. There are big obstacles that 
stand in the way of its ultimate success, but they are not 
insurmountable. Time alone will reveal. It may be that, 
as has recently been pointed out, such legislation may 
become the means whereby the public is to be educated 
in the principles of modern philanthropy. 

It is sometimes charged that charity organization socie- 
ties in common with all charity, tend to keep wages 
stationary, if not actually to reduce them. Irrespective 
of any English evidence to the contrary, there is little in 
the history of charity in this country to substantiate such 
a claim. Although charity organization societies may 
have been guilty of being niggardly in their standards 
of relief, there is little evidence that they have allowed 
what relief they did give to serve as a supplement to 
wages. Through their interest in workmen’s compensa- 
tion and the prevention of industrial accidents, family 
case workers, in common with all social workers, have en- 
deavored to place on the shoulders of industry the bur- 
dens which it has largely created and often in the past 
escaped bearing. The knowledge of the principles of good 
case work reveals the falsity of the claim that material 
relief is granted to supplement the wages of the natural 
bread-winner, though such is almost always the case where 
the support of the family falls on a widow. While charity 
organization societies in their case work may not have 
had any influence on wages, either to lower or raise 
them, a study of their records does show that frequently 
what the poor lack is adequate wages. This fact should 


PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS 513 


never be hidden. However, to ask or to expect charity 
organization societies to affect by any direct means the 
present distribution of income is asking that they assume 
a role that, under the principle of the subdivision of labor, 
other groups can better enact. 

A criticism to which charity organization societies in 
common with most social agencies are open is the charge 
that too often the directors of such organizations are in 
reality pseudo-directors. The experience of one worker 
active in the movement for a quarter of a century who 
had never had a board of directors to direct him even 
in general policies, may be exceptional. Naturally it ap- 


_peals to the self-love to be urged to allow one’s name to 
_be placed on a list of directors with the assertion that 


the loaning of the name is a gift of exceptional value to 
the promotion of the good work. The result has been 
too great a yielding among influential people in allow- 
ing their names to be utilized for projects in which they 


_ have no personal responsibility or concern. Such direc- 


tors do not direct. They let things drift into mere official 
routine and ‘leave direction more and more in the hands 
of a competent secretary, who is naturally embarrassed in 
telling his superior officers what they ought to do, and 
often accepts responsibility which does not really belong 
to him, because that is the easier way.”? It is particu- 
larly necessary in the case of charity organization socie- 
ties that they have strong boards of directors as they seek 
to develop considerable volunteer service. Volunteers 
cannot be enlisted and kept in line unless they feel that 
the members of the board of directors are themselves 
unselfish workers, actuated by the same motives that have 


_ brought them into the fellowship. The relative success 


of the movement in Boston, New York and Baltimore is 
due in no small degree to the personal interest which men 


_ of the calibre of the late Robert Treat Paine, Mr. Robert 


* Alexander Johnson, “On Being a Director,” leaflet, Series B, No. 4, 


published by The Russell Sage Foundation (1910). 


514 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


W. deForest and the late John Glenn, all board members, 
manifested in the societies in Boston, New York and 
Baltimore, respectively. 

The absence of a real partnership between the board 
of directors and the working staff leads to unfortunate 
results. Through a failure to appreciate standards of 
work, charity organization societies are frequently under- 
manned and the staff members underpaid. A ten-dollar- 
a-week clerk cannot make a social service exchange the 
instrument of codperation that it should be. In fact, 
better codperation all along the line waits until there 
are better paid, better trained and less worked assistants 
in charity organization society offices. These, in turn, 
await a fuller appreciation on the part of boards of direc- 
tors of standards in case work. 

The next criticism of charity organization societies 
is applicable equally to most other social agencies. From 
the point of view of office methods and administrative 
efficiency, charity organization societies are frequently 
poorly managed. Office devices for saving time and con- 
serving energy of employees are missing. Efficiency in 
charitable work, as in any other field of activity, requires 
constant tests of efficiency which as was noted in the last 
chapter, are frequently conspicuous for their absence. 

The most frequent criticism of the charity organization 
worker by social workers is his relative failure to educate 
the lay public in the fundamentals of family social work. 
Something is wrong when only nine societies of twenty 
invited to aid in an important study of the problem of 
the care of widows with children were able to complete 
the work that they had begun, even though the task was 
a heavy one.! Charity organizationists are prone to speak 
a technical language known largely to themselves alone. 
Those in the movement are charged with constituting a 
kind of secret society. Until charity organization work- 


*See Mary E. Richmond and Fred S. Hall, “A Study of Nine Hundred 
and Eighty-Five Widows,” Publication C. O. 34, Russell ays Founda- 
tion, p. 8 (1913). 


PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS 515 


ers cease talking about investigation, registration and 
relief, terms which are not in the vocabulary of the gen- 
eral public, and show the public human beings in action 
and human things being done, they will have failed in 
cultivating that good will of the public essential to a lay 
appreciation of charity organization work. ‘Too much 
advertisement, especially in the earlier days of the move- 
ment, has been given to the repressive side of charity 
organization, such as the suppression of street begging, 
and too little attention has been paid to informing the 
public of the positive and constructive work done in 
behalf of destitute families.: People have been told not 
to give carelessly and selfishly, instead of being told 
to give carefully and thoughtfully. Because charity or- 
ganization came as a reaction against sentimentality, it 
based its appeal too often to the head alone, forgetting 
entirely that the springs of action lie in the emotions. 
This defect is clearly illustrated by poor methods of 
advertising often employed. Annual reports can fre- 
quently be described by no more apt term than melan- 
choly.? 

The ignorance of charity organization principles comes 
out most markedly in times of emergency distress. The 
condition, however, always exists, as is obvious by the 
frequent attacks upon charity organization societies on 

the ground that money intended for relief is being spent 
on salaries. Even pastors of some large city churches, 
whose duties involve the frequent relief of distress, are 
ignorant of scientific principles of relief and sometimes 
even of the existence of the local charity organization 
society. More significant still are instances of certain in- 
dividual churches being hostile to the work of the local 
-society.2 The attitude of many newspapers is such that 


*Karl de Schweinitz, “An Anatomy Most Melancholy,” The Survey, 
Vol. XXXV, p. 509 (1916). 

7One of the main reasons for launching the Buffalo church district 
plan was the churches’ “distrust of the Charity Organization Society 
‘(see pp. 243, 244). Mr. George S. Wilson (see footnote, p. 269) stated to 
the author that in Washington during the early years of the local society 


ll i. fll 


s 


‘7 


516 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


much of what they print of the local charitable situation 
or much that they themselves undertake in the field of 
philanthropy clearly indicates that they have not been con- 
verted to the A. B. C.’s of modern philanthropy. Although 
many schemes launched by the press seem to be prompted 
by the desire for self-exploitation, others are clearly 
prompted by the most humanitarian, though misguided, 
of motives. Although the writer knows of societies which 
have made it a special point to educate the local news- 
papers in their work to the end that they might at all 
times count on their cooperation, and although he knows 
of other societies which have had a marked effect on the 
amount of indiscriminate giving obtaining in their respec- 
tive communities, nevertheless it still remains true that, 
generally speaking, forty years after the movement was 
well launched, a difficult educational task still awaits the 
charity organization societies of the country. With the 
advent of the motion picture and the scenario, the prog- 
ress of the next forty years may be much more rapid. 
There are indications that such may prove to be the case, 
though there is also the possibility that prejudices may be 
exploited by moving picture concerns as in the case of a 
film recently exhibited in one city, ““The Blood-Red Tape 
of Charity,” which attacked the methods of charity or- 
ganization by a distortion of the facts. 

As a result of this failure to educate the public, many 
who support the movement financially are socially blind, 
lacking vision. They still divide all the poor into 
“worthy” and “unworthy,” ignorant of the many: social 
causes of poverty. Their thinking has not arrived at 
the point of view that the one they deem most “unworthy” 
should often be given the greatest amount of study. The 
contributors are too often either those who have the 
benevolent point of view rather than a social point of view 
or those who believe that people “ought” to be so and so. 


there was no constituency behind the Associated Charities and many 
clergymen were opposed to it. 


PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS 517 


Too seldom are they those who desire to understand 
others for the purpose of aiding them in working out 
their own adjustments or who wish to change those social 
conditions which conduce most often to poverty. In so 
far as the money-getting methods of charity organiza- 
tion societies substitute personal connections, society pres- 
Sure or any other influence for an intelligent under- 
standing of the causes of poverty and an appreciation 
of constructive case work, they have failed in one of 
their first functions—sound education. 

The relative failure on the side of education of charity 
organization societies is reflected further in the frequent 
lack of hearty codperation between social agencies and 
the local charity organization society, and this in spite 
of the fact that four decades have elapsed since coopera- 
tion was heralded as the watchword of the movement. 
One cannot help but wonder whether many charity or- 
ganization societies have not been content with a type 
of petty codperation when they should have stopped short 
of nothing but the whole-hearted type of codperation that 
a campaign of education would have secured. ‘Too often 
the local charity organization society is not popular with 
other social agencies. 

The social service exchange is only now being intro- 
duced into the larger centers of population. Nowhere 
are inquiries of. the exchange universal and in many 

places it is far from it. Codperation is still in many 
places a phrase to conjure with, a paper plan, but not 

-ahabit of mind. It may be that in part this is explainea 

by the fact that a charity organization society is a social 

agency like any other; and every corporate agency, feel- 
ing itself in rivalry with the rest, is likely to be some- 
what jealous of every other one. Popularity is not 
the first or last test of value. A movement that came 

_as a reform must share the unpopularity of most reforms. 

| Not peace, but a sword has been and must be at times 

the means to a high end. Nevertheless, too often a ‘‘close 





518 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


corporation” attitude combined with a tendency to reach 
down to lift rather than of getting under to raise up, 
has been responsible for this unfortunate position. For- 
tunately, this condition is passing in many places as a 
younger group of professional workers, often trained in 
the same professional school, are putting into practice 
real codperation, irrespective of possible jealousies of 
boards of directors or any traditional rivalries that may 
have obtained in the past. 

An almost equally serious result of lack of popular 
appreciation of its work is the relatively small percentage 
of those who are financially able in any community who 
support the local charity organization society. This 
unequal incidence of cost, charity organization societies 
experience in common with most other social agencies. 
It is held, moreover, by some ‘“‘a distinct disadvantage 
that those who actually bear the cost of these agencies 
are few and far between, and the bulk of citizens are ex- 
cluded from a charge to which all should contribute 
according to their ability. This characteristic incidence 
of the cost of all private philanthropy amounts, in effect, 
to a penalty on the good and conscientious; and is, at 
the same time, equivalent to a bounty on those who are 
selfish and without public spirit.”1 This brings up 
squarely the old controversy regarding the respective 
merits of public and private outdoor relief discussed else- 
where.’ 

The most serious result of lack of public understand- 
ing and support is the fact that in many places charity 
organization societies are finding themselves unequal to 
the financial strain which rising standards of work are 
placing upon them.*® The question has been raised by sev- 
eral prominently identified with the movement whether 


*Sidney Webb, “The Extension Ladder Theory of the Relation be- 
tween Voluntary Philanthropy and State and Municipal Action,” The 
Survey, Vol. XXXI, p. 704 (1914). | 

*See pp. 500, 5or. 

“See Gertrude Vaile, “Some Social Problems of Public Outdoor Re- 
lief,” The Survey, Vol. XXXIV, p. 15 (1915). ‘ 

¥ 


PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS 519 


charity organization societies have not done more harm 
by the niggardliness of their relief grants than they have 
done harm by making them too lavish. This failure in 
meeting the demands of adequate relief explains, in part, 
as pointed out, the rapid spread throughout the country of 
widows’ pension legislation. That charity organization 
_ societies could accomplish far more with greater resources’ 
is a belief held almost universally by those in the move- 
ment. In the writer’s experience there was but one 
general secretary who admitted that his work was not 
hampered to a greater or less extent by lack of funds. 
The difficulty of raising sufficient funds has led some 
societies to adopt the questionable practice of accepting 
_ subsidies from public funds. Fortunately it is not general 
enough to be cited as typical of the movement. The state 
Or municipality has no right to divert money raised by 
taxes to the support of any private undertaking until all 
its own wards are taken care of and for most communities 
this will not be until a day quite distant. The subsidy 
system opens the door for all other charities to ask like 
favors, and experience has shown that the line between 
sectarian and non-sectarian has been difficult to draw in 
practice. Moreover, the subsidy system places in the 
hands of the political party in power a means to curry 
for popular favor at the poles by pointing to their gen- 
erosity in contributing to a local charity. Last, but not 
least, those responsible for the outlining and executing 
of the policies of the local charity organization society 
will be happier and more highly esteemed by critics of 
municipal life if they can accomplish their good deeds 
without submitting <hemselves to the theories and prac- 
tice of the leading politicians in order to secure funds.! 
The most serious criticism of many charity organiza- 


*Tt should be borne in mind that what is stated above, while backed 
up by the sound experience of many leaders in the field, is written rather 
to indicate the dangers that lurk in accepting public subsidies than to 
brand all societies which to-day are accepting such: subsidies as tools of 
_,any political power. 


520 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


tion societies is their failure to make case work an engine 
of social improvement. These societies have lost sight 
of their community responsibility for the development 
of those social movements that grow out of their case 
work. Such societies are scientific merely in the sense of 
efficiency in their technique. ‘They are not scientific in 
seeking out causes. One does not need to hold the posi- 
tion that the abolition of poverty is the function of the 
charity organization society to maintain that it is the re- 
sponsibility of every charity organization society ‘to in- 
terpret to the community, the facts concerning the extent 
and degree of poverty, so that the community itself, know- 
ing well the nature of the evil, may be able to apply the 
remedy.” ! If the community is not to receive these 
facts from those, like family social workers, who have 
first-hand knowledge of the problems involved, to whom 
shall it turn? It is the generalizations based on such first- 
hand observations and study as case workers can make 
that give the soundest basis for those programs of pre- 
vention that strike at the roots of poverty. The family 
case worker “should connect the neighborhood needs and 
the neighborhood points of view with the large needs of 
the community, and then work persistently for the legis- 
lative and administrative reforms that are found in all 
this careful, detailed service to be practical.”* The 
writer was present at an address by the general secretary 
of one of the oldest and largest societies when he ad- 
mitted that ‘some day” they would get to the task of 
tabulating and interpreting the mines of facts which 
they had accumulated in the years of their work, but that 
up to the present they had been “too busy” doing the 
routine of the day’s work. The great danger of the 
“busy” worker is the failure to recognize the significance 
of certain recurring factors in his or her cases. Some 
societies have met this problem, in part at least, by the 


*Report of the Associated Charities of Colorado Springs, p. 8 (1911). 
*Mary E. Richmond, “The Good Neighbor,” p. 105 (1908). - 


+ 
, 


| 


PREJUDICES AND CRITICISMS 521 


creation of statistical departments where all statistics are 
handled. There are, however, but relatively few societies 
who use even the statistical card. 

The writer cannot but feel that no day should be too 
full to make it possible for the workers to translate their 
cases into social problems and that no occasion should 
pass when their significance is not pointed out to the 
public. If this is not done, then indeed are charity or- 
ganization workers in an endless treadmill, going through 
the motions of their daily tasks, but never getting beyond 
them. 

The late Canon Barnett may have been right when he 
said, “Perhaps it is because they (charity organization 
workers) have been such ‘deadly doers’ that they have 
(comparatively speaking) done so little. If they dreamt 
more of the ideal, which is so far off, but nevertheless 
along their own line of work, they would attract the 
forces that lie around, and attraction is, after all, the 
best method of organizing.” 1 

Certain it is that the movement is suffering to-day from 
a lack of a sufficient number of broadly visioned and 
adequately trained personnel. ‘Those in the movement 
who wish to attract to their ranks the forward-looking 
youth of to-day can be content with no slogan short of 
“the abolition of poverty.”* The best minds of to- 
day, minds mature in knowledge of the world’s complex 
problems and ills, nevertheless believe that no problem, 
including that of poverty, can indefinitely remain un- 
solved in the face of applied science and applied re- 
ligion. 

+S. A. Barnett, “Wanted—A Poet,” Charities, Vol. II, p. 3 (1899). 

*Perhaps none has done more to popularize this phrase than Edward 
T. Devine, for many years secretary of the New York Charity Organ- 


ization Society. An interesting book with this title has come from the 
pen of Jacob H. Hollander (1914). That poverty is needless is the thesis 


put forward in “Essays in Social Justice,’ by Prof. Thomas Nixon 
Carver (1915). 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHARITY 
ORGANIZATION 


“Tr may be granted at once,” writes one, long a leader 
in the movement, ‘‘that the representatives of organized 
charity have not adopted any special system of political 
economy or social philosophy. They do not aim to pre- 
sent a common front either of support or antagonism 
towards the diverse schemes of social reform and im- 
provement. They are not, as a body, free traders or pro- 
tectionists, single taxers or socialists, prohibitionists, 
trade unionists, populists or expansionists.”+ In short, 
“charity organization has never pretended to have a 
complete social program.” 7 Family social workers view 
their modest day’s work as independent of any one sys- 
tem of social philosophy. It is for this reason that a 
socialist, single taxer or capitalist may be and sometimes 
is a family social worker. Philosophies of poverty vary 
from that of one worker who admitted with pride that he 
was old-fashioned enough to believe that “suffering and 
poverty are needed to develop character,” to that of a 
secretary of an old-established society who remarked to 
the writer that he was largely interested in his job that 
he might help to raise the poor to a point where they” 
would have enough surplus energy to protest successfully 
against the many injustices of the present social order. _ 

In spite of the foregoing, it cannot be said charity 
organization holds no “point of view,” no ideals to claim 


*Edward T. Devine, “Relief and Care of the Poor in Their Homes,” j 

The Charities Review, Vol. X, p. 335, (1900). 

7M. E. Richmond, “What is Charity Organization,” The Charities 
Review, Vol. IX, p. 498 (1900). 

522 : 

| 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 523 


the loyalty of its followers. In a movement which in- 
cludes within its ranks trained workers and workers un- 
trained but with experience, volunteer workers of various 
degrees of training and experience, directors and con- 
tributors, one is ever in danger of either attributing points 
of view to many in the movement who do not hold them 
or claiming for family social workers a monopoly of cer- 
tain points of view toward social welfare and social prog- 
ress which, as a matter of fact, are shared by many not 
identified with the movement. 

Several points of view seem to the author to charac- 
terize charity organization workers. First and foremost 
is the belief that altruism, mutual aid, charity is a social 
force not to be despised and rejected in social reconstruc- 
tion. 

“Tt recognizes gladly that there are other and more 
powerful social forces in the world that are working 
for its regeneration; but it affirms that charity, too, is a 
great social force. Its own task is to do what it can to 
make this force more effective, and it will not abandon 
this task for any other, however attractive; in the accom- 
plishment of its chosen work, it cooperates heartily with 
workers of every variety of social belief.” The charity 
organization movement owes its origin not to the fact 
that people are poor, but because others are charitable. 
Realizing that the impulse of altruism may do harm as 
well as good, charity organization would utilize this force 
as an aid in social advance. 

Charity is viewed then not as a “general philanthropy 
or any of the diverse forms of relief,” but as ‘‘a social 
principle.” ? In short, charity is held to be a factor in 
social evolution and the methods of charity organization 
are evolutionary. 

In common with many others, charity organization 

workers view with little favor a social order in which the 


‘tM. E. Richmond, “What is Charity Organization,’ The Charities 


_ Review, Vol. IX, p. 498 (1900). 
*C. S. Loch, “Methods of Social Advance,” p. 189 (1904). 


524 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


State is overlord, and individual initiative and responsi- ' 
bility are reduced to a minimum. Their point of view is 
one which considers the State as a social institution 
neither friendly nor hostile with independent personality, 
but as “a very vital part of ourselves, as an extension of 
our will, our conscience and our strong right arm, as a 
tool to work with... .”1 “The ideal” of charity or- 
ganization workers “is that of a society which is by no 
means entirely dependent upon the government for meet- 
ing its corporate needs, which uses the State increasingly 

. but uses increasingly also other instruments for 
executing the social will, which looks upon a voluntary 
association, a chamber of commerce, a political party, or 
a newspaper as equally appropriate, within its limits, 
sometimes very wide limits, for accomplishing any bene- 
ficent purpose.” ” 

In other words, society needs an unofficial as well as 
an official government to get all its work done well. Even 
were all public outdoor relief administered wisely, it is 
likely family social workers would not be content with a 
straight-out official relief policy. There is always the 
need for a careful study on the part of interested citizens 
of the kind of work a public agency is doing, but more 
important still is the need for evolving better and still 
better standards of work and the slow education of the 
public to a demand for the same. Experience seems to 
indicate that this can best be accomplished by a private 
agency in its capacity of a “free lance.” Adds Francis 
H. McLean: “The official, through his administrative 
and legislative machinery, and the private citizen, work- 
ing through his private agencies, are absolutely two 
equally necessary essentials for a proper development.” ® 

The family social worker is neither alarmed by the 


*Edward T. Devine, “Some Ideals Implied in Present American Pro- 
grams of Voluntary Philanthropy,” Publications of the American So- 
ciological Society, Vol. VII, p. 179 (10912). 

TERIA Di caer: 

* Francis H. McLean, “Getting Ahead of Social Problems,” The Sur- 
vey, Vol. XXVIII, p. 418 (1912). 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 525 


growth of state action nor obsessed by the desire to in- 
crease it for its own sake. The only test applied is the 
pragmatic one, namely, which, state or private action, 
gives better results under the circumstances obtaining. 
Child labor legislation, housing laws, public health meas- 
ures, recreation legislation have all received most en- 
thusiastic and consistent support from charity organiza- 
tion societies. On the other hand, “like Chalmers, or- 
ganized charity of to-day, when unadulterated, fears the 
gift-bearing types of social legislation,’ but such fear is 
not founded on a belief in a Spencerian theory of laissez 
faire, but rather on an opposition to a wholesale handling 
of relief problems from precollected relief funds such as 
too frequently characterizes public outdoor relief and 
emergency relief measures, because, judged by general 
results, they fail to accomplish their object. 

Gherity organization workers stress individual initia- > 
tive and responsibility because they count as one of the 
great facts of life which is to be welcomed that each must 
learn in the last analysis to bear his own burdens, 
to live his own life and to do his own work. They 
believe that the ability ‘“‘to paddle one’s own canoe”’ is 
always worth conserving, that self-direction is a real 
social value. ‘“The ideal of an independent citizen of 
an industrial democracy, earning his own living, providing 
for his own emergencies, and relying for support even in 
old.age on the accumulated savings of his productive 
period”? is still the inspiration of the great majority in 
the charity organization movement. What is here said 
of the individual applies with equal force to the family. 
It is held a big responsibility for society to interfere in the 
self-maintenance and self-direction of a famliy, and such 
interference should never occur unless the family falls 
so far below accepted standards as to make necessary 
social interference. 


1Edward T. Devine, “Social Ideals Implied in Present American 
Programs of Voluntary Philanthropy,’ Publications of the American 
Sociological Society, Vol. VII, p. 188 (1912). 


526 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT B 


It should not be assumed that, because charity or- 
ganization workers seek to rediscover the individual by 
the case work method, they fail to appreciate the social 
causes of poverty. It is one thing to view defective 
character as the prime cause of poverty and another 
thing to believe that adequate treatment may require in 
an individual case a study of the personality of the 
client. It is one thing to view personal service as a 
panacea for all cases of distress and another thing to 
say that, in treating those particular cases of distress in 
which the individuals concerned have been beaten in the 
fight for the mastery of their own characters, there is 
no means so effective as the individual and personal 
method. In such cases charity organization workers 
believe that men and women are not aided in masses, but 
by the contagion of personality, and that methods of 
personal contact, of example, of suggestion, will always 
be needed and in some things will always get better 
results than legislation. ‘This is becoming increasingly 
to-day the method of medicine, penology and education 
as well as of social work. 


ATTITUDE TOWARD HUMAN BEHAVIOR 


Although in some quarters one still hears the state- 
ment that defects in character are the prime cause of 
poverty, it is more common to hear family social workers 
point out that poverty of character is not a general char- 
acteristic of the poor. An appreciation of the fact that 
complex social causes force many over the. poverty line 


has replaced the comfortable and smug theory of “total — 
depravity.” The conception that poverty is a stigma is 


1“Although in many cases,” writes Joseph Lee, “poverty is not at 


the outset a disease of the character, yet under the unskillful, off-hand 
treatment of persons who believe in cure by miracle, in social rehabilita- — 


tion through the universal application of a single nostrum or gold-cure, 
it will inevitably become so.” Joseph Lee, “Charity and Democracy,” 
Charities and The Commons, Vol. XVII, p. 391 (1907). 


A ana — 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 527 


fast disappearing among the oncoming generation of 
workers. 

That charity organization workers have a scientific, 
rather than moral, attitude toward their clients was early 
evidenced by the outlawing of the terms “worthy” and 
“unworthy” as applied to the poor. A dependent person, 

irrespective of the cause or causes of his dependency, 
needs treatment. The family case work, like the doctor, 
leaves to others the task of making moral judgments. It 
is his or her task to understand people and not to blame 
them. The attitude of many of the more thoughtful work- 
ers in the field is based on the belief that determinism is 
the correct explanation of human action. ‘All men are 
of necessity what they are, and cannot be otherwise; 
and they do of necessity what they do, and cannot act 
differently.” 1 Family social workers are becoming in- 
creasingly objective in their study of the behavior prob- 
lems of their clients. This does not mean that they are 
becoming less human, but more scientific. As a cor- 
ollary they are often pragmatists ip; ggorals, -Helieving in 
their evolution rather than that rules of conduct are e fixed) 
unchangeable, absolute. ng 


Q ‘| 


wh hie 


THE FAMILY AS THE SOCIAL UNIT 


One cannot fully appreciate the desire of charity or- 
ganization workers to preserve an independent citizenship 
and to maintain family solidarity until one understands 
the significance which they attach to the family as a social 
institution. Such workers seldom concern themselves 
with historical speculations as to how the family arose or 

whether some other form of social arrangement would 
be better.2, They, nevertheless, hold that ‘the modern 


*Ray Madding McConnell, “Criminal Responsibility and Social Con- 
straint,” p. 338 (1912). 

; ? This does not mean that there are not leaders in the movement who 
have presented the claims of the modern family for support and loyalty 
based on an historical analysis of its evolution in the past;-e. g., Helen 


. 


; 
| 


528 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


family is in no sense a weakened or degenerate form.” * 
They usually face the simple fact that if most people 
had to decide whether to give up their families or their 
other interests, they would cling to their families and try 
to develop new interests. In short, they accept as axio- 
matic the fact that nothing has that primary importance 
in determining a nation’s strength and happiness that 
attaches to family life. 

The high regard in which our oldest social institution 
is held is well illustrated by the following from the pen 
of one of the leaders of the movement in England, and 
which has been quoted approvingly on this side of the 
Atlantic. 

“The pain of life is hallowed by it [the family], the 
drudgery sweetened, its pleasures consecrated. It is the 
great trysting-place of the generations, where past and 
future flash into the reality of the present. It is a great 
store-house in which the hardly earned treasures of the 
past, the inheritance of spirit and character from our 
ancestors, are guarded and preserved for our descendants. 
And it is the great discipline through which each genera- 
tion learns anew the lesson of citizenship that no man 
can live for himself alone.” 2 

It is not, therefore, surprising that charity organization 
workers believe as already stated, that the family may be 
“the means of restored independence and prosperity,” ® 
and that they constantly strive to strengthen the ties of 
family life and to avoid doing aught that would tend to 
weaken family responsibility and solidarity. It is no 
mere coincidence either that the movement should be re- 
ferred to the ‘“‘family rehabilitation movement,” * that in 
choosing a new name many societies should select the title 


Bosanquet, “The Family” (1906). See also Margaret F. Byington’s 
article, “The Normal. Family,” The Annals of The American Academy 
of Political and Social Science, Vol. LX XVII, pp. 13-28 (1918). 
*Helen Bosanquet, “The Family,” p. 336 (1906). 
ADIOS Ds S44s 
* [bid., D.iga2- 
*See Francis H. McLean, “Charity Societies,’ The Survey, Vol. — 
XXXIV, p. 207 (1915). 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 529 


“Family Welfare Society,” and that the national organ 
of the movement should bear the title, “The Family.” 


AN APPRECIATION 


If one judges the charity organization movement by 
its fruits, it takes high rank among the various move- 
ments in the history of American philanthropy. It not 
only brought system into the charity of the generation 
that saw its beginnings, but it has ever since been the 
pioneer in evolving a technique of social case work. Al- 
though others have contributed to the methods of human 
adjustment, no one group has contributed more than a 
fraction of that contributed by the family social work- 
ers of the country. 

In many communities the movement has enriched, 
either through personnel or by example, the local stand- 
ards of child welfare work. ‘To its inspiration medical 
social service owes its birth. The application of case 
work to public school children has been pushed furthest 
by those trained in its principles and methods. Even 
industry in the field of personnel work makes use of that 
standard book of family workers, Miss Richmond’s 
“Social Diagnosis.” The American Red Cross not only 
borrowed in the main the technique of the family welfare 
movement for its Home Service work, but made heavy 
inroads into its. personnel. 

Charity organization has spread not only from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific and the Lakes to the Gulf, but also 
from the large centers of population to some of the small- 


est. From a handful of communities in which an effort 


was made to systematize their efforts at dealing with the 
victims of poverty, the number of such communities now 


runs into the hundreds. The movement for social service 


exchanges and charities endorsement, though now largely 


_ independent, are both in the main outgrowths of the 
movement for organizing charity. 


<4 
? 


iH 


530 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


This means, as was pointed out in another connection 
over a score of years, that there have been embodied in 
the movement “aspirations that reappear in successive 
groups of earnest and devoted souls, needs that persist 
through successive victories over specific evils, methods 
that are flexible but permanently sound, ideas that are 
perennial, objects that humanity must attain, a spirit of 
charity that abideth forever.” 1 

Through keeping case records and studying the causes 
of poverty, many local societies became interested in 
either organizing committees aiming to prevent poverty 
as anti-tuberculosis committees, housing committees, 
child labor committees, remedial loan committees, or en- 
couraging others to organize for such work. Thus, as has 
been seen, the Buffalo Society, during over forty years 
of existence, has taken a leading part in organizing the 
social work of the community, being largely responsible 
for the growth of probation work and juvenile courts; 
tuberculosis work; wife desertion laws; chattel mortgage 
laws; tenement crusades; a model county lodging house; 
public playgrounds and baths, and a host of other things 
whicn lessen poverty. The New York Society, because 
of its location and broad-visioned leadership, early took 
no inconsiderable part nationally as well as locally in 
many of the preventive social movements. It was fur- 
thermore instrumental in conceiving, planning and carry- 
ing through the Pittsburgh Survey, and established and 
published until 1909 Charities, a weekly publication, the 
forerunner of The Survey, through which light has been 
shed on many industrial as well as social problems. These 
activities do not exhaust the list of community tasks un- 
dertaken by this society with the view to lessening pov- 
erty, nor are the two societies just mentioned, although 
prominent in the breadth of their interests in preventive 


*Edward T. Devine, Report of the Committee on Organization of } 
Charity, Charities, Vol. II, p. 3 (1899). 





z 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 531 


measures, altogether exceptional among their sister socie- 
ties scattered throughout the country. 

The charity organization movement from the beginning 
viewed itself as an educational movement. Not to monop- 
olize charity, but to make it more intelligent, has been its 
aim. It is, therefore, not surprising that the oldest school 
for social work in America should be an integral activity 
of one of the pioneer societies of the country, nor that 
many of the other schools for professional training should 
be indebted to the local charity organization society if 
not for their birth, at least for very substantial assistance 
in both class room instruction and field work. The im- 
petus to trained service in all lines of social work trace- 


able to the charity organization movement is one of the 


important fruits by which it should be judged. 


THE FUTURE 


If the road of the critic is fraught with pitfalls, the 
road of the prophet is naught else. The task in this 
instance is made easier by the fact that certain tendencies 
now manifest are likely to continue for some time. When 
social work was largely an undifferentiated field, the local 
cnarity organization society inevitably loomed large on 
the horizon of social service. It often had to assume 
tasks other than its day’s work because others were not 
yet ready to assume the burden. To some it seemed like 
a Maypole about which lesser ‘‘charities” should be con- 
tent to dance. The day of specialization has arrived and 
seems destined to stay. Others will carry on the move- 


ments for public health, housing and recreation. The 


charity organization movement is becoming the family 
welfare movement in fact as well as in name. ‘The 
emphasis on and development of standards in the tech- 
nique of social case work characterizing the past decade 
and a half are likely to continue. In fact, the develop- 


| 


; 


532 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


ment of the technique of social case work is gaining 
momentum as now one science and then another is made 
to yield a contribution for its enrichment; yesterday 
medicine, to-day psychology; to-morrow psychiatry. 

This enriching of technique greatly increases the cost of 
all social case work. Although it is to be earnestly hoped 
that in the long run this higher quality of service will 
prove a real social economy, for the present it has meant 
that the budgets of family welfare agencies all over the 
country have been rising to unprecedented and almost, 
if not quite, unscaleable heights. It would seem that 
this will probably mean a further return to public outdoor 
relief as has been the case in the care of widows. 

The increasing cost seems destined also to force charity 
organization societies to restrict increasingly their activi- 
ties to the education of both public official and citizen 
in higher standards of meeting human need. By some 
who have been most identified with the movement, this 
is held ever to have been its only function. A limited 
income means limiting intake if a high quality of work is 
to be achieved and standards advanced. Thus a family 
social agency, instead of monopolizing all the family case 
work needed to be done in a given community, will be- 
come increasingly in the future the standard-bearer of 
good work, the light on the hill by which public official, 
lay citizen or social agency touching the lives of the pos 
may judge the quality of the work undertaken. 

The development of the technique of social case work 
has gained impetus from the growing belief in the uni- 
_ versal application of its methods. That its principles and 
methods were first worked out for a special disadvantaged 
group is analogous to the development of principles and 
methods in other fields of human interest. The prin- 
ciples and methods of manual training were first worked 
out consistently for the negro. The educational prac- 
tices associated with the name of Madame Montessori 
were first worked out with the feeble-minded. So the 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 533 


principles of social case work first worked out with those 
below the poverty line are now seen to apply equally to 
those above the line of economic dependence. Those be- 
low constitute no more a class than those above. There is 
no descriptive phrase which one can apply to the former 
with any assurance that it would adequately describe 
them or differentiate them in any fundamental sense from 
humanity at large. In any group there always are found 
individual differences. Whether they are due to heredity, 
environment or both, need not concern us here. That 
they exist is, however, of vital concern to all who would 
achieve the greatest results in working with individuals, 
be that work reformational or educational. 

It is seldom that a person who is seriously out of adjust- 
ment with society can make the adjustment without 
such individual consideration. Case work, with its in- 
dividualization of treatment, is thus an inevitable part of 
all effective work with socially unadjusted individuals or 
families. It is not founded on opinion or caprice, but 
based on the laws of psychology and of social organiza- 
tion which are gaining increasing recognition in other 
fields of human endeavor. 

The last twenty-five years has seen a remarkable ad- 
vance in medical knowledge. Science has learned, for ex- 
ample, the cause of tuberculosis, and is to-day especially 


concerned in perfecting its cure. To popularize this new 


medical knowledge and to make it effective is one of the 
crying needs of the time. It matters little how far ad- 
vanced pure science may be, if this knowledge is not in 
such form as to be effectively applied, to the individual. 
A man may get the best kind of instructions at a tuber- 


—culosis dispensary, but it avails little if these instructions 
are not properly carried out, as in too many cases they 


are not, often through the lack of understanding of in- 


structions, or the lack of money to carry them out. Social 
work in the form of a visiting nurse or other expert of 


the social service department of some hospital must 


534 CHARITY ORGANIZATION . MOVEMENT 


individualize each case in applying scientific knowledge 
to effect a cure. 

In the realm of education we are now learning that 
much advance can be made by individualization of treat- 
ment. Costly school equipments have been erected 
throughout the length and breadth of the land. Children 
are waiting by the millions to be educated. There is much 
waste at the present time in the returns which society 
is getting from its investment. It is not enough that 
there are the children to be educated on the one hand 
and a costly and advanced school system on the other. 
That school system is a failure which does not reach 
the individual child. Much of the effectiveness of 
the present school machinery is destroyed by bad home 
conditions, such as overcrowding, improper food or a lack 
of appreciation on the part of parents of the work of 
the school. These conditions often result in irregular at- 
tendance, a falling behind in the grades and an early 
dropping out of school in favor of the factory. Social 
case work will not have done its full service to the 
community until through a system of visiting teachers it 
follows up the work of the school into the home and so 
makes it truly effective. Such work must in the nature 
of the case deal with the individual. 

It is, in short, the universality of the principles and 
methods of social case work that interests some of the 
most conscientious workers in the charity organization 
movement as much as helping the poor out of their pov- 
erty, even though that contribution when done construc- 
tively may be of incalculable value. 

An interesting corollary of the wider applic iene of 
social case work may be the development of a pay serv- 
ice for those who can afford it and who need help 
in solving some of their personal problems of adjustment. 
Such a practitioner must be not only versed in the 
principles of applied psychology, but also know enough of 
the principles of medicine and psychiatry to utilize “a 


ee 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 535 


cialists in these fields whenever needed. Pay clinics, 
aptly described as ‘a step toward democrauc medical 
service,’ + have arrived. Is it too much to expect that 
pay service in the field of social case work is about to 
become a reality? 

It may well be that the cnarity organization movement, 
like earlier movements in philanthropy, may go, but social 
case work in its broader applications seems destined to 
go on forever. Since eternal change is the order of na- 
ture, there can be no final solutions for social ills. A 
society founded on socialism, single tax or anarchy 
would, in time, doubtless need its charity organization 
society or its counterpart. As civilization evolves it 
brings ever new problems, and demands ever more com- 
plex adjustments of the individuals who compose the body 
politic. In the onward march of progress there will al- 
ways be some who find the new adjustments demanded 
more difficult than others. As long as society is dynamic, 
social institutions will fail to function properly, and 
some will tend to drop back or even out of the pro- 
cession. Such maladjustments are some of the ‘‘costs of 
progress.” Three alternatives are possible: ruthless 
elimination; a slowing of the rate of progress to fit the 
pace of the slowest; or the stronger and more able helping 
those who tend to lag behind, to make an adjustment 
which would otherwise be impossible. The need for in- 
dividual adjustment, which is the heart of the case work 
of the charity organization worker, thus seems to be 
written in the nature of progress itself. 

The spirit of charity was born and fostered of that 
“struggle for the lives of others,” as Henry Drummond 
terms it, which has been the basis of social solidarity in 
all the stages of social evolution, whether the unit be the 
family, the clan, the village community or the modern 
state. This charity, which is an obligation imposed on 


'Michael M. Davis, and Andrew R. Warner, “Pay Clinics,’ The 


Survey, Vol. XL, pp. 334-336 (1918). 


536 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


all in the name of a common humanity, to help those who 
need help, still has the same function in modern society 
and will doubtless continue to have, that it has had in all 
the ages of man’s past evolution. 

Will an age whose watchword has become Prevention 
continue to need family case work, except for the indi- 
vidual who falls behind in the procession called social 
progress? History and current experience answer in the 
affirmative. Repeatedly the experience gained in the 
service of the few has revealed the needs of the many. 
Such has been the origin of the great preventive move- 
ments of housing, public health and recreation. ‘Those 
who are engaged in the relief of distress, unless they are 
mere automata, are inevitably led to the consideration 
of preventive measures. In brief, social case work reveals 
the social conditions which call for community action. 

This method of working from the small to the large, 
from the individual to the general, has the value of rivet- 
ing down the new preventive measures whicn might other- 
wise be so far removed from reality as to add to the num- 
ber of paper programs that are aborted each generation. 
The first-hand knowledge of those who have worked be- 
side the victims of bad social conditions is of immense 
value, for as Miss Van Kleeck has well pointed out, “the 
social reformer who does not draw his conclusions from 
the actual experience of individuals is in danger of being 
an unsafe guide in social action.” 2 

Although we cannot abolish poverty by individual case 
work, case work is the means by which we look before we 
leap, if we would see our way clearly in attacking scien- 
tifically this ancient, but no longer necessary, evil. An 


analysis of the thousands of cases coming before a char- — 
ity organization society reveals the economic and social 


forces operating in a given community to create poverty. 


*See Charles A. Ellwood, “The Functions of Charity in Modern 
Society,” Charities and The Commons, Vol. XIX, pp. 1348-1353 (1908). 


?Mary Van Kleeck, “Case Work and Social Reform,” The Annals, 


Vol. LXXVII, p. 9, (1918). 


Agee 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 537 


Good case work, “if recorded, will add to human knowl- 
edge and echo to the end of time.””! Its first-hand knowl- 
edge of social and industrial conditions and of the action 
and reaction of environment and heredity affords a val- 
uable fund of information for scientific research.” Social 
case work, when well done, is, therefore, not only. con- 
structive, but preventive as well, both for the individual 
and for society. 

The enthusiasm of many a charity organization worker 
is found in the belief that a great opportunity lies before 
those who take the data of “‘the day’s work” to bring 
forward ‘a program of radical social action and social 
legislation that shall tend to develop in every citizen in 
our community the spiritual force and vitality that is in 
him and shall not at the same time deprive him of a frac- 
tion of such force by taking from him the need upon 
which to so large an extent its exercise, its very existence, 
depends.” ? It is the broadly trained and large-visioned 
social case workers who have the experience at hand out 
of which a radical constructive social program ought to 
grow and upon which such a program must be based if it 
is to be sound and effective for its purpose. And such 
is the unity of social work that it is safe to say that the 
charity organization worker who has not an outlook be- 
yond the individual person or family with whom he is 
dealing, and who does not translate his cases into social 
problems and so make case work count in their solution, 
will scarcely be the most successful in his services to the 
individual he or she serves or to society at large. 

It may be that this age has made as much progress in 
the realm of social theory as possible, and that what 
is now needed is for some of our best minds to go into 
the field to gather new material for the next thought 


*Edna G. Henry, “The Sick,” The Annals, Vol. LX XVII, p. 59 (1918). 
*See Edward T. Devine, “Misery and Its Causes” (1909), a study of 
families who were known to the New York Charity Organization 
Society. 
___*Joseph Lee, “Charity and Democracy,” Charity and The Commons, 
~ Vol. XVII, p. 394 (1907). 


538 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


development. Certainly initiative and fresh ideas come 
from actual personal contact with the active work of the 
world, in tenement, court room, reformatory, factory, 
playground, schoolroor! hospital, and clinic. 

Besides providing a method for the effective treatment 
of individuals and of revealing the social conditions which 
call for community action, social case work has the fur- 
ther value of being actually the first steps in prevention 
itself. In winning for the present generation of con- 
sumptives, for instance, the kindest and most adequate 
Care, we are cutting out many centers of contagion and 
at the same time educating the public as to the true means 
of prevention. Every case in which feeble-mindedness 
is a controlling factor that is adequately handled means 
that the potential procreation of similar feeble-minded 
never becomes a reality, and the first step of a movement 
toward the prevention of feeble-mindedness has been 
taken. 

In a broader sense cure has often been the forerunner 
of prevention by showing the concrete step necessary to 
accomplish this end. “In the office of the country prac- 
titioner, in the crowded wards of city hospitals, and on 
the field of battle,” writes Miss Richmond, “medicine has 
sought and found, while pushing hard toward cure, the 
blessed means of prevention. This has been the method 
of modern medicine and it may well be in the future the 
method of modern charity.” 1 The large problem can 
only be understood and attacked when it has been mas- 
tered in detail in the individual case. 

Case work, furthermore, aids social reform in providing 
a test of the value of legislative and non-legislative mass 
measures for social welfare in revealing their effect upon 
the individuals whose condition of life and work such 
measures reach. It may corroborate and confirm the 
ideas or basis on which such measures rest, or it may 
demonstrate that such ideas need supplementary meas- 


*Mary E. Richmond, “The Good Neighbor,” pp. 17 and 18 (1908). 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 539 


ures, or may be even erroneous and impractical. Thus, 
for example, child labor reform is not accomplished when 
its champions have succeeded in placing laws on the 
statute books. If the enforcement of the law works hard- 
ship in individual instances, laxness is likely to creep into 
the enforcement of the law and gradually result in bring- 
ing the whole law into disrepute. To prevent this case 
work with scholarships for certain needy children is often 
required. It is usually those who, having a passion for 
facts, see all that is involved in such a situation and save 
the law from becoming a dead letter. Whose opinion, 
moreover should be more valuable on the success or fail- 
ure of a given piece of legislation in the field of mothers’ 
pensions, child labor, compulsory school attendance and 
workmen’s compensation than those whose daily routine 
brings them into close and intimate contact with the 
many affected for weal or for woe by such measures? 

Furthermore, the experience gained in the service of 
the few will help not only to determine the needs of the 
many and the needs of supplementary measures, but it 
will ‘‘ascertain the probable reaction of the greater num- 
ber to general preventive and curative efforts.” + 

The sine qua non of all effective social legislation is 
intelligent public opinion. The education of the public 
in the realm of social reform depends upon effective prop- 
aganda. Who can bear truer witness to the persistent 
spread of tuberculosis and its close connection with pov- 
erty than the charity organization worker and the district 
visiting nurse? To the waste of human and economic 
resources through infant mortality? To the increase of 
mental defectiveness? Who sooner than the family social 
worker finds the father of a family a spent toiler at fifty? 
Who realizes more keenly the number of deserting fath- 
ers? Human suffering in the concrete usually calls forth 
the most untiring efforts for bringing about greater social 


*Mary Willcox Glenn, “Case Work,” The Survey, Vol. XXIX, p. 430 
(1913). 


540 CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT 


justice which, in the last analysis, is but a phrase to 
cover a number of concrete reforms in the social struc- 
ture, each of which must be worked out by definite steps.! 
Who will make greater efforts to bring social justice than 
those who have tried to help the victims of injustice? 
With a sense of reality they are more likely to be the 
ones to bring about the better day, while their critics still 
continue to criticize. For this educational work the char- 
ity organization society, with a large force of volunteers, 
is exceptionally well equipped. 

It has been the charity organization society with its 
records of flesh and blood supplying abundant illustra- 
tions with which to reinforce cold arguments in behalf of 
measures of prevention that has brought about a social 
awakening in many communities. Such efforts have often 
led communities “‘to deal, not by some magical formula, 
not by some golden panacea, not once for all, as some 
mistakenly think, but to deal, nevertheless, radically and 
intelligently with specific social evils, one after another, 
and to deal with them not merely in their symptoms, but 
in their complicated ramifications and with their ultimate 
causes.” * Thus the charity organization movement mod- 
estly, starting as an agency to systematize the giving of 
relief, by the very nature of its intensive work with de- 
pendent families has become a mighty force as an inter- 
preter of social conditions, and a creator of sound public ~ 
opinion in matters of social reform. 

The dominant note of the charity organization move- 
ment is not sounded nor the dynamic force of the move- 
ment understood until one appreciates why charity or- 
ganization workers exclaim in response to the slogan, 
“Not charity, but justice,” that ‘“‘while the appeal to jus- 
tice is good, it is not enough.” ‘Not theology only, but — 
social economy makes Portia’s confession that in the — 

*See Frank Tucker, “Social Justice.” Presidential Address at the 
fortieth meeting of the National Conference of Charities and Cor- 


rection (1913). 
*Edward T. Devine, Unpublished Address. 


o 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION 541 


course of justice none of us should see salvation. The 
total annihilation of injustice might leave us bankrupt of 
progress, prosperity and good will. The appeal of the 
future as of all the past is for a genuine philanthropy 
of which justice is a part, for a passionate concern that 
our neighbors shall have from us not just dealing only, 
but the electric touch of human sympathy and under- 
standing, the partnership of man with man which keeps 
us above the brutes and below the gods on the more 
congenial levels of our common humanity! 1 The same 
leader in the movement wrote elsewhere in similar vein. 
“Spiritual benefits, social courtesies, personal considera- 
tion expressed in a thousand ingenious ways, will operate 
as charity, calling forth devout benedictions, long after 
all need for alms has forever disappeared. Instead of 
ceasing to ask for and to accept what we have not earned, 
as we become more independent and more interdependent, 
we shall accept freely and with glowing hearts vastly 
more that we have not earned than now, concerning our- 
selves but little as to our earnings, but rejoicing in the 
privilege of giving freely to others, with even less con- 
cern as to their earnings.” “Justice says do not destroy 
life; charity says save life.’ It is in this sense that 
another leader of the movement gives as the best defini- 
tion of charity organization—‘‘love with judgment”—and 
in reply to the query, ‘“‘why need we organize so sweet a 
thing as charity,” says, “we organize music which would 
otherwise be discord. We organize religion. Without 
organization, charity would be, to a large extent, waste 
and error.”’ * 

*Edward T. Devine, “Philanthropy and Business,” The Survey, Vol. 
XXXII, p. 265 (1914). 


*Edward T. Devine, “A Medieval Efficiency Test,” The Survey, 
Vol. XXXI, p. 597 (1914). 

* Felix Adler quoted by Mary Willcox Glenn. Presidential Address 
Forty-second National Conference of Charities and Correction (1915). 

“Frederic Almy, Annual Report, Buffalo Charity Organization Society 


_ (rors). 





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York, The Catholic Publication Society Co., 1878, pp. xii, 
345. 

PAINE, Ropert Treat, Jr., “The Work of Volunteer Visitors 
of the Associated Charities among the Poor,” Journal of 
Social Science, No. XII, 1880, pp. 101-116. 

PARMELEE, Maurice, “Poverty and Social Progress,” New 
York, The Macmillan Co., 1916, pp. xv, 477. 

PaTTEN, S. N., “The New Basis of Civilization,’ New York, 
The Macmillan Co., 1907, pp. vii, 220. 

“Problems in Charity and Correction,’ Special Bulletin of the 
American Academy of Political and Social Science, May, 
1903. 

Proceedings, National Conference of Social Work, (See Na- 
tional Conference of Charities and Correction). 

Publications of the Charity Organization Department of the 
Russell Sage Foundation, New York City. 

Report of Committee on Home Economics, New York Char- 
ity Organization Society, “Budget Planning in Social Case 
Work,” Bulletin no. 3, 1919, pp. 31. 

“Report of the Superior Council of New Orleans to the Coun- 
cil-General in Paris, for the year 1914,” Society of St. 
Vincent de Paul, 1915, pp. 46. 

“Report of the Superior Council of New York to the Council- 
General in Paris, 1914,” Society of St. Vincent de Paul, 
1915, Pp. 90. 

“Reports on the Elberfeld Poor Law System and German 
Workmen’s Colonies,” presented to both Houses of Parlia- 
ment by command of Her Majesty, March, 1888, London, 
Eyre and Spottiswoode, pp. 137 (pp. 51-95, “Report on the 
Elberfeld System and the Organization of Charity in Ger- 
many,’ by C. S. Loch). 

Ricumonp, Mary E., “Friendly Visiting Among the Poor: A 
Handbook for Charity, Workers,” New York, The Mac- 
millan Co., 1914, pp. vili, 225. 

“The Good Neighbor in the Modern City,” Philadel- 

phia, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1908, pp. ix, 159. 

, “Social Diagnosis,’ New York, Russell Sage Founda- 

tion, I917, pp. SII. 

and Hatt, F. S., “Study of Nine Hundred and Eighty- 

five Widows Known to Certain Charity Organization So- 











552 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 


cieties in 1910, New York Russell Sage Foundation, Char- 

ity Organization Dept., 1913, pp. 83. 

, “The Retail Method in Reform,” International Journal 

of Ethics, Vol. XVI (1906), pp. 171-179. 

, ‘What Is Social Case Work?” New York, Russell Sage 
Foundation, 1922, pp. 268. 

Riis, Jacop A., “A Modern St. George,’ Scribners’ Magazine, 
Vol. L (1911), pp. 385-402. 

Ross, E. A., “Philanthropy with Strings,’ Atlantic Monthly, 
Vol. 114 (1914), pp. 289-294. 

Sanpers, E. K., “Vincent de Paul, priest and philanthropist, 
1576-1660,’ New York, Longmans, Green & Co., 1913, pp. 
419. 

SAayYLes, Mary Bue tt, “Home Service in Action; A study of 
Case Work in the Home Service Section of the New York 
and Bronx County Chapters of the American Red Cross,” 
New York, N. Y. County Chapter, American Red Cross, 
19021) Dp. 232. 

SEARS, AMELIA, “The Charity Visitor, A Handbook for Be- 
ginners,” Chicago, School of Civics and Philanthropy, 1913, 
Dp 70) 7 

“Second Annual Report, Municipal Charities Commission,” City 
of Los Angeles, California, 1914-1915, pp. 106. 

SENIor, Nassau WILLIAM, “Statement of the Provision for the 
Poor and of the Condition of the Labouring Classes in a 
Considerable Portion of America and Europe,” London, 
B. Fellowes, 1835. 

SHALER, NATHANIEL S., “The Neighbor; the natural history 
of human contacts,’ Boston, Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1904, 
Pp. vii, 342. 

SHEFFIELD, ADA Ettot, “Social Case History, Its Construction 
and Content,” New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1920, 
“Social Work Series,” pp. 227. 

SLosson, Epwin E., “Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford,” in 
“Leading Men of Science.” Edited by David Starr Jordan, 
N. Y., Henry Holt, 1910; pp. 9-50. 

SMITH, SAMUEL GeEorGE, “Social Pathology,” New York, The 
Macmillan Co SIOLl ppl ville 380) 

“Social Work with Families,” The Annals of the American 
Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. LXXVII, 
Philadelphia, The American Academy of Political and 
Social Science; 1918, pp: ix; 108. 

SOLENBERGER, ALICE WILLIARD, “One Thousand Homeless 
Men,” New York, Charities Publication Committee, Ig11, — 


PP. XXIV, 374. 








SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 553 


STEWART, WiLt1aM RHINELANDER, “The Philanthropic Work 
of Josephine Shaw Lowell,” New York, The Macmillan 
Oe OLT AOD. SS4. 

SUMNER, WM. GranaM, “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other,” 
New York and London, Harper and Bros., 1883, pp. 169. 
The Survey, a journal of social, civic and industrial welfare 
and the public health, New York, Charities Publication 
Committee, Ig909—date. Survey Associates, Inc., since 1912. 

ToyNBEE, ARNOLD, “Toynbee Lectures on the Industrial Revo- 
lution of the Eighteenth Century in England,’ London, 
Longmans, Green and Co., 1915, pp. 317. 

TUCKERMAN, JosEPH, “An Essay on the Wages Paid to 
Females for Their Labor,’ Philadelphia, Griggs and Dick- 
inson, 1830, pp. 58. 

, “On the Elevation of the Poor,’ edited by Edward 
Everett Hale, Boston, Roberts Bros., 1874, pp. 206. 

UFrorp, WALTER S., “Fresh Air Charity in the United States,” 
Bonnell, Silver and Co., 1897, pp. iii, 114. 

UHLHORN, JOHANN GERHARD WILHELM, “Christian Charity in 
the Ancient Church,” translated from the German, New 
York, Scribners, 1883, pp. vi, 424. 

“United States Bureau of Labor Statistics,’ No. 195, July, 1916, 
p. IIS. 

WALLERSTEIN, HELEN C., “The Functional Relations of Fifteen 
Case Working Agencies” (as shown by a study of 421 
individual families) and “The Report of the Philadelphia 
Intake Committee,’ Bureau for Social Research, Seybert 
Institution, Philadelphia, 1919, pp. x, 176. 

Warn_er, Amos G., “American Charities: A Study in Philan- 
thropy and Economics,” first edition, New York, Crowell, 
1894, pp. viii, 430; revised edition, 1908, pp. xxii, 510; third 
edition, 1919, pp. XxXli, 54I. 

Wess, SIDNEY and Beatrice, “The Prevention of Destitution,” 
London, Longmans, Green and Co., IgII, pp. vi, 348. 
Wines, F. H., “Sociology and Philanthropy,” Annals of the 
American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 

XII, 1808, PP. 49-57. 

Winter, ALice Ames, editor, “Charles Gordon Ames: A Spir- 
itual Autobiography,” Boston, Houghton, Mifflin Company, 
1913, pp. 229. 

Year-Books of the American Association for Organizing Family 
Social Work, formerly the American Association of So- 
cieties for Organizing Charity, 1912—date. 

Yu-Yue Tsu, “The Spirit of Chinese Philanthropy,’ New 
York, Longmans, Green and Co., 1912, pp. 122. 





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INDEX 


Adams, Herbert B., 307 fn. 
Addams, Jane, 305, 508. 
Adequate relief, 411-414. 
as a test of efficiency, 451, 452. 
causes for increase in amount of, 
413. 
Alcoholism, prevention of, 373, 374. 
Almy, Frederic, 116 fn., 445 fn. 
American Association for Commun- 
ity Organization, 435, 4306. 
American Association for Organiz- 
ing Family Social Work, 344- 
346, 362, 390, 408, 419, 439. 
Council of Charity Officers—a 
forerunner of, 238, 239. 
requirements for eligibility to 
membership, 345, 346. 
American Association of Social Ser- 
vice Exchanges, 410. 
American Association of Societies 
for Organizing Charity, 310, 
346 fn., 361, 363, 393, 438, 439. 
see also American Association 
for Organizing Family Social 
Work. 
American Red Cross, 437-439. 
institutional membership in, 377- 


379. 

Ames, Charles Gordon, 175, 188 fn. 

Ames, Fanny B., 407. 

Annual reports, 488, 480. 

criticism of, 515. 

Antecedents of the movement, for- 
eign, see Foreign antecedents 
of the movement. 

Antecedents of the movement in 
the United States, 64-93. 

Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 56. 

Associations for improving the con- 
dition of the poor, nation-wide 
movement for the establish- 
ment of, 76-88. 

causes of failure of, 88-93, 224. 


Bailly, Sylvain, 38-44, 50. 
Baron De Gerando, 71. 


555 


Begging, attitude of charity organi- 
zation societies toward, 310- 
310. 

Beginnings of charity organization 
in the United States, 172-221. 

Bernard, Thomas, 4o. 

Bicknell, Ernest P., 376. 

Blizzard of 1899, Relief Problems 
of, 285, 286. 

Boards of directors, duties of, 468- 
471, 513, 514. 

Brackett, Jeffrey R., 306 fn. 

Busch, Prof. J. G., 20. 

Buzelle, George B., 106. 


Cabot, Richard C., 367, 368, 416 


fn. 

Cannon, Ida M., 366. 

Case-by-case method of finance, 
160-162. 

Case conference, 134-136. 

tests of an efficient, 454, 455. 

Case records, 472-474, 510. 

Wises’, Ol,01 22,523. 

Causes of poverty, see Poverty, in- 
terest in causes of. 

Causes of introduction of charity 
organization into the United 
States, 214, 215. 

Central councils of social agencies, 
106-109, 192, 346, 425-428, 
441, 461. 

definition of, 107. 

Chalmers, Thomas, 3, 27, 33-38, 
57, 64, 132, 175. 

Channing, William Ellery, 7o. 

Charities Buildings, 223. 

Charities endorsement, 
419-422. 

Charity a social force, 523. 

Charity organization, 

criticisms of, 492-521. 
principles of, 114-171. 

Charity organization movement in 
England and United States 
compared, 62 fn., 63 fn. 


II0-I12, 


556 


Charity Organization Department 
of The Russell Sage Founda- 
tion, 309, 343, 344, 351, 362, 
363, 387, 388, 408, 417, 419. 

Charity Organization Institute, 309, 
310, 344, 363. ‘ 

Charity organization society, defi- 
nition of, 2, 105, 106. 

functions of, 94-113. 
Christianity and charity, 12. 
“Church district plan” of organi- 

zation, 243-248, 515 in. 

City conference and community 
planning, the, 424, 425, 461. 
Cleveland Federation for Charity 
and Philanthropy, 429-433. 
Closing of cases, a test of effi- 
ciency, 455, 456. 
“Coldness” of scientific charity, 

495-407. 

Community planning and the city 
conference, 424, 425, 461. 

Confidential exchange, 92, 93. 

see also Social service exchange. 
Co-operation, 128, 131. 

improvement in, 409-410. 

sources of, 136-139. 

a test efficiency, 448-450. 
Council of Charity Officers, 238-9. 
Count Rumford, 28-32. 

“Cost of giving a dollar away” 
criticism, 497-500. 

Criticisms and prejudices, 492-521. 


Daily committee work, 135, 136. 

deForest, Robert W., 382, 513, 514. 

Degerando, Baron, see Baron Deg- 
erando. 

Democracy and charity, 506-509. 

Denison, Edward, 3, 58-62, 140, 
A105 297. 

Departments of public welfare, 400, 
ol. 

Dependent children, interest in, 303, 
304. 

Desertion, interest in, 319-323. 

Devine, Edward T., 376, 382 fn. 

Directors, boards of, duties of, see 
Boards of directors, duties of. 

Disaster relief, 232-234, 352, 353, 
375-377: 

District committees, 134, 135. 

suggested readings on, 136 fn. 
District plan of organization, 131- 


134. 
Dugdale’s Study of the Jukes, 493. 


INDEX 


Education, a function of a C. O. 
S., 96, 97, 146, 456, 517, 531, 
539, 540. 

Efficiency, tests of, 444-491. 

Elberfeld system, 3, 44-49, 175, 
178, 178 fn. 

Ely, Richard T., 307 fn., 334. 

Emergent relief, 161, 394 fn. 

Emerson, Charles P., 366, 367. 

Employment bureaus and C. O. S., 
109. 

Esprit de corps, maintaining, 480, 
481. 

Exchange bureau, 340. 

Extension of the charity organiza- 
tion movement (1883-1895), 
222-280. 


Family as a social institution, 527- 
520. 

Family, The, 346, 529. 

Family rehabilitation, meaning of, 
94-96. 

Field Department of Charities and 
the Commons, 337, 338, 340, 

_ 341, 343, 363, 408. 

Finance, 481-487. 
cost of collecting, 485, 485 in. 
methods of, 482. 

Financial exchange, 4109. 

Financial federation, 170, 171. 
movement for, 428-436. 
objections to, 436 fn. 

Finley, John H., 236. 

Forbes, James, 314 fn. 

Foreign antecedents of the move- 

ment, 11-63. 
Forms of organization among char- 
ity organization societies, 465- 


467. 

Philadelphia plan, 132 fn., 180, 
190, 205, 208, 213, 283, 284, 
466. 

St. Paul plan, 243, 425 fn., 466. 

Forwarding centers, 341. 

Frankel, Lee K., 305. 

Fresh air work, interest in, 295, 
2096. 

Friendly visiting, 149-156, 271, 272, 
418, 453, 454. 

definition of, 149, 150. 

difficulties of, 154, 273. 

objects of, 150, 151. 

suggested readings on, 156 fn. 


Future of charity organization, 531- . 


541. 


INDEX 


Germantown experiment, 4, 175- 
ET7CO TOU, 

Gilman, Daniel C., 207, 337 fn. 

Gladstone, William E., 56. 

Glenn, John, 7, 32, 208, 337 fn., 


514. . . . 

Government subsidies and charity 
organization societies, 170, 170 
fn., 468, 519, 519 fn. 

Green, Prof. T. H., 56. 

Gurteen, S. Humphreys, 179, 180, 
a4 in. 185, 210. 


Hale, Edward Everett, 197, 235. 

Hall, Fred S., 451; 452. 

Hamburg system of poor relief, 3, 
18-28, 287. 

Handicapped, interest in special 
treatment of the, 369-371. 
Hartley, Robert M., 32, 79, 80, 83- 

85, 88, 90, OT. 

Henderson, Charles R., 211, 314 fn. 

Higgins, Alice L., 376. 

Hill, Alsagar, 56. 

Hill, Octavia, 52, 56-58, 62, 140, 
Tyeeelyee kyo /10., 200, 210, 
ary. 257. 

History of the charity organiza- 
tion movement in the United 
States, 172-443. 

Home Economics, influence of, 411. 

Homeless, case work with the, 229- 
231, 310-319, 356, 450. 

Home Service, 437-440. 

Hospital social service, 366-369. 

Housing reform, interest in, 287- 
203. 

Human behavior, attitude toward, 

"526, 527. 


Immigrants, Social case work with, 
416. 
Improving social conditions, de- 
partments for, 301-303. 
responsibility for, 460-462. 
Inactive cases, 456. 
Industrial depression, of 1893-1894, 
248-265. 
of 1907-1908, 379-381. 
of 1914-1915, 384-393. 
Industry and charity, 383, 384. 


see also Unemployment and 
charity organization. 
Industry and charity, see also 


Workmen’s compensation, in- 
terest it. 


557 


Inebriate, the, 372, 373. 
Information in social diagnosis, 
sources of, 118, 447, 448. 
Interim relief, see Emergent re- 
lief. 
Interviews, 
447. 

Investigation, 118, 329 fn. 
suggested readings on, 120 fn. 
see also Social diagnosis. 


privacy during, 446, 


Johnson, Alexander, 8 fn., 235, 238 
[N26 inser 

Justice and charity, 540, 541. 

Juvenile probation, interest in, 
297-299. 


Kellogg, Charles D., 211 fn. 
Kingsley, Charles, influence of, 
55- 


Lazarites, 15. | 
Lee, Joseph, 305, 508. 
Legal justice, 300, 301. 
see also Legal aid. 
Legal aid, 299, 300. 
LeGras, Mademoiselle, 16, 17. 
Liverpool system of finance, 240, 
240 fn., 433 fn. 
in Denver, 240-243. 
Loch, Charles S., 35, 51, 366. 
London Charity Organization So- 
ciety, 53-63. 
Los Angeles Municipal . Charities 
Commission, 404-406. 
Low, Seth, 193-195, 216. 

Lowell, Mrs. Charles Russell, see 
Lowell, Josephine Shaw. 
Lowell, Josephine Shaw, 7, 209, 

335, 407, 503. 


MecGilloen.. Oscar, Ci07,.119 sin, 
BOs mets) 311203. 290, 42375 
457, 458. 

McLean, Francis H., 329 fn., 362 
In} 382: in. 

Manchester School of Economics, 
influence of, 217. 

Maurice, Frederick Denison, influ- 
ence of, 55. 

Medical social work, 366-369. 

Municipal Charities Commission of 
Los Angeles, see Los Angeles 
Municipal Charities Commis- 
sion. 


558 


National Association of Societies 
for Organizing Charity, 344, 


345, 346 in. 

see also American Association for 
Organizing Family Social 
Work. 


National Conference of Charities 
and Correction, later National 
Conference of Social Work, 
L74; TV 4aR aly: 

National Desertion Bureau, 322. 

National Employment Exchange, 
382. 

Nationalization of charity organi- 
zation movement, 337-406. 
Natural selection and philanthropy, 

493, 494 

Negro problem in South and char- 
ity organization, 357, 358. 

Newman, Cardinal, 56. 

New York School of Philanthropy, 
The, 223 fn., 308, 300. 

Non-support, 319-323. 


Office management, criticism of, 


474, 475, 514. 

Organizing charity, meaning of, 
139-141. 

Ozanam, Frederick, 3, 18, 38-44, 59. 


Paine, Robert Treat, Jr., 7, 163 fn., 
206, 228, 337 fn., 399 fn., 502, 


513. 

“Passing on,” see Transportation 
agreement. 

Patten, S. N., influence of, 307 fn., 


334 fn. 

Peabody, Francis G., 307 fn., 334. 

Pellew, Henry E., 177, 179. 

Pennsylvania School for Social 
Service, The, 300. 

Personal service in charity organi- 
zation, 144, 145. 

“Philadelphia plan,” see forms of 
organization among charity or- 
ganization societies. 

Philanthropic publication, 191, 234- 
238, 239, 304-306. 

Philosophy of charity organization, 
522-520. 

Pioneer societies, 

Baltimore, 207, 208. 
Boston, 178, 179, 197-201. 
Brooklyn, 193-196. 


INDEX 


Pioneer societies—Continued. 
Buffalo, 179-186. 
Cambridge, 207. 
Cincinnati, 205. 
Cleveland, 207. 
Detroit, 204, 205. 
Gemantown, 175-177. 
Indianapolis, 202, 203. 
Lowell, 207. 
New Haven, 186, 187. 
Newark, 211. 
Newport, 196, 197. 
New York, 177, 178, 209-211. 
Philadelphia, 86, 187-193. 
Salem, N. J., 207: 
Syracuse, 196. 
Taunton, 207. 
Terre Haute, 211. 
Washington, 208. 
Pittsburgh Survey, 305, 306, 
383. 
Poor Law Reform of 1834, 54, 55, 
59, OI. 
Poverty, interest 
456. 
interest in prevention of, 
104, 281-336, 381-384. 
Press and charity organization, 
458, 487, 488, 515, 516. 
Principles and methods of charity 
organization, 114-171. 
Probation work, interest in, 297- 
299. 
Promptness of service, a test of 
efficiency, 167, 446. 
Propaganda, 487, 488. 
Provident Loan Society of New 
York, 228, 220) 
Psychiatric social 


in causes of, 


100, 


work, 414, 
APS: 

Public and private relief, co-opera- 
tion between, 98, 99, 354, 364, 
400-406. 

Iowa plan, 402-404. 
see also Los Angeles Charities 
Commission. 

Public outdoor relief, charity or- 
ganization and, 170, 183, 184, 
188, 190, IQI, 271, 399-401. 

changing attitude toward, 399- 


4Ol. 

Publicity and charity organiza- 
tion societies, 457-460. 

Public work in emergency relief, "§ 
250, 261, 387, 388. 

Putnam, Dr. Charles PS 278: 


INDEX 


Qualifications for family case work, 

462, 463. 
Quincy, Josiah, report on the pau- 
per laws of Massachusetts, 68. 


Registration, 123-125, 179, 269, 270. 

Relation of case work to commun- 
ity work, 460-462. 

Relief, changed attitude toward, 
323-325. 

early attitude toward, 219, 220. 

inadequacy of, 166 fn., 511, 512, 
518, 519. 

meaning of, 156, 157. 

suggested readings on, 160 fn. 

Shall a C. O. S. maintain a gen- 
eral relief fund? 160-168. 

Shall a C. O. S. supply relief 
for specialized agencies? 100. 

sources of, 160-171. 

standards of living as standards 
of, 158, 159. 

Relief, public outdoor, see Public 
outdoor relief. 

Relief societies, relationship with, 
88 fn., 162-165, 166 fn., 168, 
169, 325-330. 

Remedial loans, interest in, 227- 
2209. 

Re-opening of cases, test of effi- 
ciency, 455, 456. 

Resources available for the work 
of rehabilitation, see Co-opera- 
tion, sources of. 

Richmond, Mary E., 97, 98, 107, 
Pamoetsi eiod, 165;: 212, 308, 
332, 417, 451, 452. 

Riis, Jacob A., 305. 

Robertson, Frederick William, 55. 

Rumford, Count, see Count Rum- 
ford. 

Ruskin, John, 56, 57 fn. 

Russell Sage Foundation, 460, 461. 

Russell Sage Foundation, Charity 
Organization Department, see 
Charity Organization Depart- 
ment of the Russell Sage 
Foundation. 


“St. Paul plan” of organization, 
see forms of organization 
among charity organization 
societies. 

Saint Vincent de Paul, contribu- 
tion of, 14-18. 

Society of, 39-44. 


559 


Salaries as a test of personnel, 464, 
465. 

Sanborn, Frank, 174 fn., 334. 

San Francisco fire and charity or- 
ganization, 375-377. 

Schuyler, Louisa Lee, 209. 

Shaler, Prof. N. S., 152. 

Smaller communities and charity 
organization, 104, 105, 363-365. 

Smith, Zilpha D., 71 fn., 119 fn., 
155, 178 fn., 182 fn., 320, 407. 

Social case work, definition of, 114. 
renaissance of, 407-418. 
universal application of, 532-535. 

Social case treatment, 136-171. 
illustration of, 139, 140. 

Social diagnosis, 117-136. 
improvement in, 414-417. 
meaning of, 117, 118. 
see also Investigation. 

Social justice, interest in, 277, 278, 

504, 505, 540, 541. 

Social philosophy of charity or- 
ganization, 522-520. 

Social reform and family case work, 
102-104, 330-336, 373, 374, 519- 
521, 530, 531, 536-540. 

see also Relation of social case 
work to community work. 

Social service exchange, 113, 400, 
410, 449, 517. 

development of, 125-128. 
services of, 126, 127. 

Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, 
see Saint Vincent de Paul, So- 
ciety of. 

Soup-houses, 66 fn., 75, 75 fn., 283, 
ge3i tha siis 

Sources of information in social 
diagnosis, see Information in 
social diagnosis, sources of. 

South and charity organization, the, 
347-358. 

Southwest and charity organiza- 
tion, the, 360, 361. 

Stamp savings, 197. 

Standard of living, as a basis for 
relief, 157-159, 409, 448, 451, 
452. 

see also Relief, standards of liv- 
ing as standards of. 

Standards and tests -of efficiency, 


444-491. 
Statistics, difficulty in use of, 8, 9. 
Supervision of workers, 476-479. 
Syndic Sillen, 19. 


560 


Taylor, Graham, 305. 

Tests of efficiency, see Efficiency, 

tests of. 

Thompson, Benjamin, see Count 

Rumford. 

Trained personnel, a test of effi- 
_ ciency, 452, 453, 479, 480. 
increase in, 333, 334. 

Trained worker defined, 452, 453. 

Training for social work, 306-310. 

Transportation agreement, 318, 319, 

346, 358, 450. 
Trevelyan, Sir. Charles, 56, 58. 
Tribe of Ishmael, study of, 236, 


aa98 ; 
Tuberculosis, movement for the 
prevention of, 293-207, 340, 


351, 353, 3506. 
home hospital experiment, 297 fn. 
Tuberculosis, National Associa- 
tion for the Study and Preven- 
tion of, 294. 
Tuckerman, Joseph, 70-76, 92, 197, 
216. 


Unemployment and charity organi- 
zation, 381-383. 

United States Industrial Commis- 
sion, 383, 384. 


Vagrancy, 318 fn. 
attitude of the charity organi- 
zation society toward, 310- 


aL 
Veiller, Lawrence, 289. 
Vincentians, see Lazarites. 


INDEX 


Volunteer service, 145-156. 
improvement in, 417, 418, 465. 
kinds of, 146. 
purposes of, 418, 459, 478 fn. 

Von der Heydt, 45, 47, 178. 

Von Voight, Casper o7ezsneas 

27,20. 


Wages as affected by 
512, 513. 
Warner, Amos G., 64, 80, 170 fn., 
207 fn., 208, 223, 238, 334, 407. 
Wayfarers’ lodges, 316, 317. 
Wayland, Rev. H. L., 277, 278. 
Welfare Federation, 441, 442. 
see also Financial Federation. 
West and charity organization, the, 
358-360. 
Whewall, Dr., 56. 
White, Alfred T., 194, 288. 
Widows’ pension legislation, atti- 
_ tude toward, 393-399, 511, 512. 
Workmen’s compensation, interest 
in, 170, 370; 442.in estas 
Work test, the, 121, 380, 389, 390. 
World War and charity organiza- 
tion, 437-440. 


Yates, J. V. N., Report of the Sec- 
retary of State, N. Y. in 1824 
on the Relief and Settlement 
of the Poor, 68-70. 

Years 1883-1895 in retrospect, 266- 
280. 

Years 1896-1904 in retrospect, 330- 
336. 

Years 1905-1921 in retrospect, 440- 
443. 


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